In this year's NBA Draft, only one player from the University of Arizona was drafted, and that was Deandre Ayton. He went number one overall to the Phoenix Suns. Two other Arizona players that declared for the draft were Rawle Alkins and Allonzo Trier. Both of them were projected to be second-round picks. Alonzo Trier had one of his worst games as a UNiversity of Arizona Wildcat and ended on a bad note as the Wildcats were upset by Buffalo in the first round of the NCAA tournament. Both Trier and Alkins shot a combined 8-for-24 from the field. Both Alkins and Trier were picked up after the draft with Trier signing a two-way contract with the New York Knicks and Rawle Alkins signing a training camp deal with the Toronto Raptors.
The reason why this is such a big deal is because Wildcats keep leaving school early to enter in the draft when they are not ready. Some would argue that both of these players were ready to get drafted, others would argue that only one of these players were ready to get drafted.
Not just at Arizona, but at other schools, players leave after one year or a certain amount of years thinking that they are ready to go to the NBA when they are advised not to go. For example, Kobi Simmons and Chance Comanche entered into the draft before the Wildcats thinking that there was a team that was going to draft him. Simmons was the only one who got picked up after the draft. That did not happen for Comanche as he went un-drafted and did not get picked up by a team.
This is also a big deal because this makes the Wildcats look bad having all of these players getting passed on and it makes people think that the PAC-12 is getting overlooked when it comes to talent in the conference compared to the rest of the country. But no one has any doubts about the Wildcats becoming NBA players. We have doubts about getting looks over schools like Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, and Villanova. This is where we need to become resilient and perform better in the NCAA tournament so that Arizona can get those looks over other schools.
