Pac-10 Departures Open Door for New Talent

A handful of top Pac-10 basketball players have either decided to forgo the remainder of their college careers or are testing NBA waters.

Here’s how the process goes. College basketball players can either declare for the NBA draft, work out with teams, and see how they stack up to other talent, or they can dive right into the NBA draft by hiring an agent.

Once a player hires an agent, he can no longer return to play college ball. For players who declared for the NBA draft, they must make up their minds whether they want to go back to college or be drafted into an NBA team by May 8^th.

This year’s list of players who declared for the NBA draft but have not hired an agent:

Klay Thompson, WSU

Isaiah Thomas, UW

Players who have hired agents and decided to not go back to college include:

Derrick Williams, Arizona

Nikola Vucevic, USC

Tyler Honeycutt, UCLA

Malcolm Lee, UCLA

DeAngelo Casto, WSU

Derrick Williams, Arizona

What does this mean for the Pac-10?

You can either look at the glass half empty or half full. From a pessimistic scope, the Pac-12 basketball league will probably not be as good as it has been in the past. With the abrupt absence of these top players across the league, the conference will have an absence of high-scoring leaders.

On the bright side, this will lead to an opening for new talent. For example Arizona hopes to fill the void of Derrick Williams departure with Josiah Turner, who ESPN ranks as the third best point guard to be recruited by the NCAA. Additionally University of Washington’s Tony Wroten and Arizona State’s Jahii Carson are ranked as the number 5 and number 8 point guards to be recruited.

So while it will be evident that the Pac-12 conference is missing a large number of top players, the conference hopes to make a quick rebound with young talent.