In honor of the NBA season tipping off tonight, I thought I would present the former college of all players on the opening day rosters. (I’ve actually seen some other links that have done the same thing recently, but I wanted to download the full rosters on opening day myself.)
The opening day rosters include:
59 International players that did not attend a US college
56 ACC
54 Big East
48 Pac10
41 Big 12
40 SEC
31 High School
29 Big Ten
12 CUSA
11 A10
10 MWC
9 WAC
5 WCC
5 CAA
5 Sun Belt
3 MVC
18 Other
-In addition to the 59 international players who did not attend college in the US, there are some international players that did attend college in the US, such as Australia’s Patrick Mills who attended St. Mary’s.
-Eventually the high school group should shrink because it is much harder for players to jump directly from high school to the NBA. But the 31 high school players still include the best players in the NBA from Kobe Bryant to LeBron James to Dwight Howard. Brandon Jennings is currently the only player in the “high school” club with less than 5 years of NBA experience.
-The rest of the talent has mostly come from the ACC and Pac 10. Because the Big East includes 16 teams, they have a number of NBA alumni, but the Big East has fewer alumni per team. And the Big Ten has the fewest NBA alumni among BCS conferences with only 29 on opening day rosters.
Here are the numbers by team:
14 UCLA
13 Duke
13 Kentucky
12 North Carolina
12 Kansas
11 Connecticut
10 Arizona
10 Texas
9 Florida
8 Wake Forest
7 Ohio St.
7 Georgia Tech
7 LSU
7 Syracuse
7 Memphis
6 Stanford
6 Michigan St.
5 USC
5 Washington
The next table shows the full rosters broken down by college conference and then by college team. Scroll down to see the full table.
If I had a lot of money and power and could build my dream NBA charity event, I would love to make an exhibition tournament and pit some of these alumni teams against one another.
-Imagine Rajon Rondo leading all those young Kentucky players.
-Is North Carolina’s NBA roster starting to look a little bit weak? Vince Carter might be the only “star” left and I’m not sure how much he has left.
-Could a Wake Forest team with Chris Paul, Tim Duncan, and Josh Howard compete with players like Jeff Teague and James Johnson filling out the rotation?
-Allen Iverson is finally retired and the days of Georgetown being able to fill out a reasonable starting lineup are now long gone.