The NBA draft early entry list is pretty much set at this point with the Kentucky starting five making a joint announcement that they'd all be coming back next season.  Just kidding.  They surely haven't attended a class since Thanksgiving, and all five will play in the NBA the next time they take the court.  Due to a quirk in the rules, we may still see some outward movement.  While anyone currently in the draft has already lost their collegiate eligibility as of April 11th, the NBA's deadline is not until next Sunday meaning that we could see a last minute change of heart or two from guys who are returning.  As most of the guys who haven't declared have affirmed they're coming back, any additional entries would be very surprising indeed.

This season there were 8 freshman, 13 sophomores and 15 juniors (counting only DI players) that have declared.  Those numbers are on the low side.  Only once since the "one and done" rule came into effect have fewer than eight freshman left for the NBA, and only once in those six years has fewer than 36 players jumped early.  In fact while the number of sophomores leaving is the second highest, due in large part to the returns last year of Harrison Barnes, Jared Sullinger, Terrence Jones, and Perry Jones, the number of juniors is also tied for its lowest level ever.

YR	FR	SO	JR	TOTAL
2012	8	13	15	36
2011	8	9	22	39
2010	12	15	22	49
2009	4	11	21	36
2008	13	9	15	37
2007	8	5	17	30

As always there were a few curious departures:

*Justin Hamilton of Louisiana State may well be 6-11 or 7-0 which makes for an intriguing prospect, but a guy that size who is still unproductive in general needs that last year of seasoning.

*Villanova's Dominic Cheek was once one of the best SG recruits in the country.  After taking two years to crack the Cats' starting five, he'll take his sub 40% from the field to the pros somewhere.

*Khris Middleton had an outstanding sophomore season which put him on the map at Texas A&M, but a coaching change and injuries led to a disappointing junior season.  He has first round pick potential, but he needed another year in college to re-establish himself.

The rest went about as expected.  James McAdoo and Cody Zeller stuck around to prevent the one and done number from cracking double digits again.  Among upperclassmen, JRs Mason Plumlee, Kenny Boynton, and surprisingly, SO CJ Leslie were among the those who will return to college next season.

Ashton Pankey, 2011-12

To say Ashton Pankey is an enigma or frustrating would probably be an understatement. Coming into the season, expectations weren't that high for Pankey. He had sat out almost all of his freshman year (playing just one minute in the season opener) before getting a medical redshirt. That came on the heels of missing the entire prior season while he was in high school due to injuries as well. Despite having been well schooled playing for legendary high school coach Bob Hurley at Saint Anthony's in New Jersey, Pankey had little in the way of a recruiting profile, picking Maryland over runner-up Houston.

The hope was that maybe Pankey could be brought along slowly and develop into a contributor over the next few seasons. Unfortunately, plans sometimes go awry. With Jordan Williams deciding to take his talents to the NBA and Hawk Palsson returning to Europe to play professionally, as well as Alex Len's early season suspension, there was no choice but to throw Pankey into the fire.

He responded shockingly well in his first real game action, putting up a 13 and 6 line in the opener against UNCW and then posting 10 and 11 rebound games during the Terps' trip to Puerto Rico. Things soured pretty rapidly though. In a big early December win over Notre Dame, Mark Turgeon, never shy to make a point, played Pankey just 1 minute because of the player's attitude and demeanor, instead choosing to go small with Sean Mosley and Mike Parker as well as walk-on John Auslander.

In the immediate term, Pankey responded well, putting up 43 points over the team's next three games (the last three of Len's suspension), but questions about Pankey's drive and attitude continued throughout the season, and with Len available, Pankey's minutes and production waxed and waned as Turge was far more free to be judicious with his allocation of playing time across the board.

At the season's end, the raw numbers spoke favorably of Pankey. He was good on the boards (17.1/10.1 DR/OR) and as a shotblocker (2.8 block rate). He was also fairly efficient, if limited offensively, as unlike Padgett, he was not prone to trying to do too much with the ball in his hands.

Still, the questions lingered, and to some extent still do, as to whether Pankey would even be back next season given his hot and cold relationship with his coach and the influx of talent in the frontcourt beginning next year with Charles Mitchell and Shaq Cleare. That aside, it's important to remember that Pankey was still only a freshman this season, and from an on court perspective, showed plenty of potential. The likelihood that both Mitchell and Cleare can provide 15-25 minutes of ACC-caliber basketball in the frontcourt every night is slim next year so Pankey will have a role to play. If he can fulfill the potential he demonstrated this year, he can play a big role in making Maryland's frontcourt one of the deepest in the conference.

Mychal Parker set to transfer

This was supposed to be the first in a series about the seven returning player's from this season's Terps' team, but with today's news that Mychal Parker will be transferring at the end of the school year, it didn't make a ton of sense to break down the nuances of his game.

Parker wrote an exceedingly classy farewell letter to Terrapin Nation. Given that and how he always seemed to hustle while out on the court, it will be hard not to root for him wherever he ends up. The early schools mentioned included Loyola and UAB, both of whom have the former Maryland assistant connection with Rob Ehsan moving on from Virginia Tech this offseason.

Parker wraps up his career at Maryland with 3.4 points and 2.1 boards per game over 45 career games. His strength this year was in his rebounding as he was one of the best rebounding guards the Terps had seen in the past decade. He also shot very well at the FT line down the stretch, hitting 36 of 46 after starting off his career very poorly from the stripe.

Parker was also notable for his athleticism and his sporadic, but ridiculous, dunks. The athletic ability was never in question, but it was always a matter of whether the basketball skill will follow. Now he gets the opportunity to sit out a year and improve which should probably have happened last season, and when he does become eligible at his new school, he'll do so at a level where he could potentially put up big numbers in the scoring column.

The question now is what this says about the Terrapins going forward. Two weeks ago the team clearly had too much depth for next season in the backcourt with Parker still on board and Sam Cassell committing. Now with Parker gone and Cassell's status tenuous, the team will rely on five guys for the three backcourt spots, barring a late addition. Newcomers Seth Allen and Jake Layman seem like they'll get every shot to play right from the start of the season, and the team will need at least one to complement the three starters.

2008 Recruiting Retrospective

Season #2 has arrived. Some of you may call it the offseason, but that implies it's without excitement. For college basketball devotees like us, the coaching carousel, AAU and recruiting season, and the speculation about who's staying and who's going to the NBA hold almost as much intrigue as the season itself does. One other thing that happens during the second season is player movement via transfers. This seems to happen more and more now for a few reasons, both speculative and factual.

One driver would seem to be the player movement at the high school level. For a top level recruit, it seems unusual if the player hasn't been to more than one high school. Whether it's a guy transferring from his local public school to a local private school power, or it's the wandering nomad of high school hoops whose number of school matches or exceeds the 4 years of high school, players move around.

The second factor which we've seen more and more every year, is the graduate student loophole which allows a "student-athlete" who has graduated from his current institution with eligibility remaining to transfer to play immediately at another school, provided he does so to enroll in a graduate program not offered at his current school. That seems quite logical, but if you've followed this over the past couple of seasons, it's usually a way for bigger schools to poach a player from a school lower down the rungs.

Jeff Goodman on CBSSports puts together an annual transfer list these days which is incredibly comprehensive. His list already has over 200 names on it and will almost assuredly continue growing as the academic year comes to a close and the coaching carousel continues to spin.

All of this led me to take a look at the high school class of 2008 and ask the question: how many players are four year players? For those that don't finish those four years is it a transfer situation, a draft situation, or something else entirely? This would probably be even more interesting if I were able and willing to track which school(s) these players originally committed to and when, but that's a bit more work than necessary for now.

So let's take a look. I used the top 30 players at each position on Rivals' rankings (top 20 for Centers) and tracked how their college careers have gone. Here's the positional breakdown:

PG - 9 early entries, 4 transfers, 16 four-year players, 1 other

SG - 10 early entries, 10 transfers, 11 four-year players

SF - 5 early entries, 7 transfers, 16 four-year players, 2 other

PF - 10 early entries, 8 transfers, 9 four year players, 3 medical issues

C - 3 early entries, 8 transfers, 9 four year players

So in total, out of the 140 players in the class of 2008 we had the following breakdown:

37 early entries

37 transfers

60 four-year players

6 other

Early entries are anyone playing professional basketball right now whether it's a traditional 1 and done, a guy playing in Europe, or someone like Brandon Jennings who never made it to college, choosing to go to Italy instead. The other category has some guys who had to stop playing due to injury and a few guys who switched sports.

In the ACC the numbers were a little different:

9 early entries

9 transfers

18 four-year players

1 other

The league actually had an identical even split between transfers and early entries just like the first sample, but the number of four year players was half of the total pool as compared to the above where it was a bit lower (3/7).

Moral of the story: expect player movement. When a guy gets his jersey handed to him on Senior Night after playing for your favorite school for four years, he's the exception, not the rule.