It is ignorant to think that a single player, in the right situation with the right resources, cannot dramatically alter the course of a college program, similar to the fashion that he can change an NBA franchise. Although it’s impossible to predict how long high school-to-NBA players would have remained in college, their decision to wait on the NBA would have carried significant short and long-term effects throughout both college and professional basketball.
Many fans are starting to turn their attention to the college game as we rumble toward March Madness, a time that can have a huge impact on decisions to remain in school or depart for the NBA. But what about the guys that never made it to March Madness?
The number of players that jumped from the prep ranks to the NBA is open for interpretation. Does Moses Malone count because he played in the ABA before NBA? Or Shawn Kemp, who enrolled at Kentucky but never played due to academic concerns and other issues. Considering all of those situations, there have been somewhere between 40 and 60 players that leapt from high school to the pros, leaving a potentially epic college career on the table in doing so.
Where would some of those dozens of players have attended college? All of the following players either signed letters of intent or there were overwhelmingly heavy indications that they would attend that school.
