The homestretch of the college basketball season is upon us with the NCAA tournament tipping off in mid-March. Once the trade deadline passes Feb. 23, decision-makers from all 30 teams will finally be able to shift their full attention to the 2017 NBA draft, which is generating quite a bit of excitement from scouts and talent evaluators. With that in mind, this is as good of a time as any to hit on some key topics as the draft picture begins to crystalize.

The elite tier

Most NBA teams seem to have honed in on nine to 11 players they expect to be picked in some order at the top of the draft. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a late riser such as Marquese Chriss last year, Elfrid Payton in 2014 or Dion Waiters in 2013, or that someone won’t drop over the course of the draft process.

The talent at the top: Markelle Fultz, Lonzo Ball, Josh Jackson, Dennis Smith, Jayson Tatum, Jonathan Isaac, Lauri Markkanen, De’Aaron Fox and Malik Monk, with opinions varying on Frank Ntilikina and Miles Bridges. These players can be drafted in almost any order, having distinct strengths and weaknesses. Even the No. 1 pick is still up for discussion, depending on which team wins the draft lottery.

The late lottery and mid-first round

This is where the picture gets extremely muddled. That’s not particularly surprising – even the NBA league office struggles to identify who might be drafted in this tier. Last year, three of the 16 “green room” invitees (Skal Labissiere, Deyonta Davis, Dejounte Murray) ended up falling to the late first or early second round.

Part of that is due to how young the draft is trending. Every one of the 16 prospects slotted from Nos. 12-27 in the latest DraftExpress Top 100 rankings are NCAA underclassmen or international players who are 19 or younger. Many of them have almost no body of work to speak of, such as Robert Williams of Texas A&M or Justin Patton of Creighton, who were completely anonymous prospects before the season.

For NBA general managers who are still getting their bearings on this draft, this next month of evaluation will be critical. Scouting teenagers can be a perilous process because performance sample sizes are often so small.

Terrance Ferguson is one of the top international-based prospects. (Getty Images) More

Getting a handle on the international-based prospects – Ntilikina in France, Isaiah Hartenstein in Lithuania, Rodions Kurucs in Spain, and Terrance Ferguson in Australia – hasn’t been easy either. In December, 27 of the 30 NBA teams declined to send an American-based executive to the U18 European Championship in Turkey, where strong evaluations of Ntilikina and Hartenstein could have been made. Ferguson has played a fairly minor role in Australia, and Kurucs has missed time because of injury and is suffering from the low level of competition in the Spanish second division.

In short, there’s a lot left to play for and plenty of movement will occur after the season during the pre-draft process, where workouts, background checks, psychological evaluations and medical examinations will cause a great deal of movement on draft boards.

Too many bigs?

Going roster by roster, it becomes apparent that very few NBA teams are in need of adding more size. There are currently 77 players 6-foot-9 or taller playing 15 minutes or fewer per game. In other words, every NBA team has an average of 2½ big men who don’t play a major role.

It’s no secret that the NBA game is going smaller. Two point-guard lineups are in vogue. Wing prospects are scarce. Combo forwards are coveted commodities. Coaches are trying to get as many shooters on the court as possible. Are more big men really what the NBA is looking for?

Things really don’t add up when you look at the makeup of the players ranked outside of the elite tier. Out of the 29 players ranked in the Nos. 12-40 range of the Top 100, 21 can be classified as power forwards or centers. With only 19 spots in the first round after the top 11 prospects, it’s likely that at least half of those 21 will either have to go back to school or risk being drafted in the second round. There simply isn’t that great of a demand for big men, unless they are capable of spacing the floor from the 3-point line.

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