Fun Facts: Final Four Pros vs Joes

29. Mar, 2011 Comments Off

In order to make it to the Final Four it takes a lot of hard work, luck, sweat, good refs, and apparently a couple of future NBA players. Of the 96 teams that reached the Final Four between 1985 (the year the tournament expanded to 64 team) and 2008, 94 had at least one player who eventually appeared in an NBA game.

In fact, having just one future NBA player is usually not enough: 91% of all Final Four teams over the same time period have had at least two, with the majority of teams having at least four future NBA’ers. The two exceptions: Oklahoma in 2002 and George Mason in 2006. Which begs the question…does this years VCU team have any future pros on it?

A breakdown of how many future NBA players were on Final Four teams from 1985 – 2008.

# NBA PLAYERS	% FINAL FOUR TEAMS
Nine Players	1% (1996 Kentucky)
Eight Players	1% (1991 North Carolina )
Seven Players	0%
Six Players	9%
Five Players	22%
Four Players	23%
Three Players	21%
Two Players	14%
One Player	7%
No Players	2% (2002 Oklahoma, 2006 G. Mason)
Source: Basketball-Reference