Barry Jacobs On The ACC & The Draft

This was the fourth consecutive June in which the National Basketball Association picked at least five ACC players in the opening round. Whatever else can be said of ACC basketball, like the league's football teams it apparently has plenty of talent in the estimation of pro evaluators.

This year's six first-rounders included a quartet from North Carolina - Harrison Barnes, John Henson, Kendall Marshall, and Tyler Zeller. The feat is not without precedent. Duke had four picks in the 1999 first round (Elton Brand, Trajan Langdon, Corey Maggette, William Avery) and UNC had four in 2005 (Marvin Williams, Raymond Felton, Sean May, Rashad McCants).

Both of those talent-rich teams reached the NCAA championship game. The Blue Devils fell to UConn, while the Tar Heels bested Illinois.

Interestingly, Brand and Maggette remain in the NBA. Picked six years later, Williams and Felton are the only '05 Heels still prominent on the pro scene.

The selection of four UNC players gives that school 21 in the two decades since 1993. Austin Rivers and Miles Plumlee were Duke's 19th and 20th selections in those 20 years.

Among teams that were in the ACC for that entire period, Virginia has provided the fewest first-round picks: one, Cory Alexander in 1995.

These are the 15th and 16th times in the past two decades that multiple players were taken from the same ACC squad, and the fourth with more than one team having multiple players taken.