With the college basketball season officially over, USA TODAY SMG’s Rookie Wire is looking at draft stock for players on top NCAA teams.
As of July 2019, there were thirty players who played college basketball at Kentucky playing in the NBA. That was the largest representation from one college in league history, per HoopsHype. That number will increase with a new draft class from the Wildcats set to hear their names called this summer.
John Calipari recently said that five players on Kentucky have entered their names into the 2020 NBA Draft (via 247 Sports)
“What we did before they left, I had individual meetings with each player and I had the staff in there. I wanted everybody to hear it together individually with players but with my staff. We just did a Zoom call yesterday with my entire team to try to keep touching base with them, but the reality of it was five of them have put their name in the draft.”
Based on their current draft stock, one would assume those players are: Tyrese Maxey, Ashton Hagans, Nick Richards, Immanuel Quickley and EJ Montgomery.
However, two others who played at Kentucky (Kahlil Whitney and Keion Brooks) registered on the NBA Draft radar points this season. As such, we research their draft stock for this study as well.
Two quick notes: evaluations will be based on the NBA Undergraduate Advisory Committee (UAC) scale of whether a player is a lottery pick, first-rounder, early second-rounder, late second-rounder or undrafted.
These numbers were determined by monitoring mock drafts and big boards published throughout the season, starting from immediately after the 2019 NBA Draft and updated in real-time.
Mock drafts and big boards are included not only from mainstream analysts and experts but also current and former agents, front office executives as well as various trusted sources around the league.
The composite results for Kentucky are included below but click the name of each player for a closer look at each prospect.
Tyrese Maxey | Ashton Hagans | Nick Richards | Immanuel Quickley | Kahlil Whitney | EJ Montgomery | Keion Brooks
