NCAAM teams
College Basketball Experts 9y

Drafting college hoops' best lineup

Insider Men's College Basketball

Five players, one coach and an objective of winning a 40-minute college basketball game. That was the equation we put before five college basketball experts, who on Wednesday night took part in ESPN Insider's first college basketball draft (#CBBdraft, for those who followed on Twitter). The results of that process are below.

NBA draft stock or future college greatness was not a consideration, just current college basketball aptitude. We also allowed our experts to select a coach at any point in the draft. As you'll see below -- in an indication of the premium placed on players -- every expert, including two longtime college basketball coaches and another who was an assistant under the winningest coach of all time, waited until their final pick to select a coach.

Once the picks were in, we had revered college basketball analytics guru Ken Pomeroy (kenpom.com) crunch the numbers and evaluate who had the best squad. Draft order was set randomly (numbers below reflect overall draft position):


John Gasaway's Team

1. Frank Kaminsky, Wisconsin (Sr., F, 7-0, 234)
10. Seth Tuttle, Northern Iowa (Sr., F, 6-8, 240)
11. Rakeem Christmas, Syracuse (Sr., F, 6-9, 250)
20. Tyus Jones, Duke (Fr., G, 6-1, 190)
21. Corey Hawkins, UC Davis (Sr., G, 6-3, 195)
30. Coach - Tony Bennett, Virginia

KenPom says: You better make good use of your first shot against Team Gasaway, because with Kaminsky, Tuttle and Christmas, he has three of the best defensive rebounders in the country. Furthermore, coach Tony Bennett has directed some elite defensive rebounding teams himself, with his teams ranking in the top five in defensive rebound percentage four times in the past seven seasons. And something tells me Bennett could construct an elite half-court defense from this group.

Offensively, one concern would be how Kaminsky and Christmas can coexist. Kaminsky has made 30 of 72 3-point attempts and most folks are aware of his range. But his post game is solid as well. His 2-point percentage is actually better than Christmas' (58 percent to 56 percent). Any concessions Kaminsky would make for the sake of spacing would hurt his overall production a bit. Hawkins and Jones give the team some bona fide outside threats, but this group isn't going to take a lot of 3s, with the other three players collectively taking 111 3-pointers this season.


Jay Bilas' Team

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