My colleague Chad Ford is projecting that the 2017 draft will be dominated by freshmen, particularly at the top. Assuming that's the case, many of the freshmen entering college right now will be sporting ball caps and large smiles come next summer.
But all that's in the future. For now I'm interested in what these guys can bring to the table on behalf of their college teams. So I decided to make some informed projections on what exactly stars such as Harry Giles and Josh Jackson are going to show us in the next few months.
I've chosen to use good old-fashioned per-game stats just for simplicity's sake (pardon me while I close my flip phone and grab this floppy disk), but note that each player blurb seeks to address quality in addition to sheer volume where performance is concerned.
Based on the player rankings in the 2016 ESPN 100, here are my expectations for the top 20 freshmen for 2016-17: