Among NBA stars, Kentucky players had most NCAA Tourney success

Under John Calipari, Kentucky has put dozens of players into the NBA. As of the 2021-22 season, there are 29 former Wildcats in the league, which leads all other colleges by a significant amount. As KSR’s primary NBA correspondent, following our guys is fun! There are spectacular performances from former Kentucky players every. single. night.

Heck, I wrote an article on Monday explaining that five of the best 25 scorers since the All-Star Break are all former ‘Cats. One of the great joys of the Calipari era is enjoying all of our alumni absolutely kill it at the pro level.

Let’s do some research.

NCAA Tournament success among top NBA players

Producing top NBA talent on a year-to-year basis should translate to success in the NCAA Tournament, right? The best players in the NBA were probably stars in college that carried their teams to deep runs. That’s not always the case, unless you played for Kentucky. I took a look at the top 50 scorers in the NBA this season and their college careers. Since several of those guys either skipped college or came from overseas, the list included the best 40 NBA players to have played American college basketball.

Among the 40, only one player won an NCAA National Championship. His name is Anthony Davis. Only six of the 40 made the Final Four: Davis, Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns and Julius Randle represent Kentucky as four of the six. Fred VanVleet (Wichita St.) and Jerami Grant (Syracuse) were the other two — both of them scored fewer than five points per game while each of the Kentucky guys averaged double figures. So the only current top-50 NBA players to meaningfully contribute to a Final Four run played for Kentucky.

Let’s move the goalposts to just the Elite Eight. NBA studs Tyler Herro, Bam Adebayo and De’Aaron Fox all join the list, as do RJ Barrett (Duke), Stephen Curry (Davidson), Domantas Sabonis (Gonzaga) and Bradley Beal (Florida). That’s 13 total top-50 NBA players that made an Elite Eight and SEVEN of them rocked Kentucky blue.

Most NBA stars failed to drag their college teams past the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Not in Lexington. When John Calipari has had future NBA All-Stars on his rosters, his teams made deep runs. Elite Eight or better. Kentucky simply hasn’t had talent of that caliber over the last two years. Perhaps the real problem in 2021 and 2022 is the lack of that superstar power at Kentucky. Because when he has it, Calipari typically delivers.