How to Build a Lottery Pick

I had the idea several months ago to find out where the NBA lottery picks came from. I went through all of the lottery picks since 2006, the first year you couldn't be drafted out of high school. Obviously the #1 pick is more valuable than the #14 pick but for this exercise I am treating them all equally. After all, the 14th pick in the lottery is going to be a darn good college player. Also, I grouped them by their high school since that is where the college coaches would be recruiting them. The foreign players who did not play college basketball in the US are excluded from this exercise.

College

In a perfect world I would have wrote this before the 2015 draft but such is life. If you want to be drafted in the lottery, you should probably be playing for Kansas or Kentucky.

Kentucky -13

Kansas - 10

Duke - 8

UConn - 6

UNC - 6

Arizona - 5

Texas - 5

Florida - 4

Indiana - 4

Ohio State - 4

Position

Center - 26

Power Forward - 28

Small Forward - 21

Shooting Guard - 29

Point Guard - 21

Year in School

Freshman - 50

Sophomore - 33

Junior - 27

Senior - 15

High School

I used the following map to sort the players.  (The number on the map is the region number, not the number of players drafted.)

Pacific Region - 6

Southwest Region - 15

Midwest Region - 27

Southeast Region - 23

Northeast Region - 36

Mountain Prairie Region - 2

Alaska Region - 0

Pacific Southwest Region - 14

Did not attend US high school - 2

Position by School

Center

Kentucky - 5

UConn - 3

Florida - 2

Kansas - 2

Power Forward

Kentucky - 4

UNC - 4

Kansas - 3

Arizona - 2

Duke - 2

Small Forward

Arizona - 2

Georgetown - 2

Kansas - 2

Shooting Guard

Duke - 3

Kansas - 3

Indiana - 2

UCLA - 2

USC - 2

Washington - 2

Point Guard

Kentucky - 2

Ohio State - 2

Syracuse - 2

Conclusion

So there you have it. What conclusions can we draw from this raw data?  Freshman Center/Power Forwards from the Northeast who played at Kentucky or Kansas are probably going to the drafted in the lottery.

If there are any other combinations you would like to see let me know in the comments and I'll put it together.