The upcoming NBA draft will be another day that will feature several University of Kentucky Wildcat players in the first round.

Everyone knows that UK coach John Calipari is an excellent recruiter. He continues to get some of the top high school players to come to Lexington. Most of them are one and done.

The same thing will happen this year.

This past Wednesday top prospect Nerlens Noel announced he’s joining Kentucky, bolstering the Wildcats’ hopes of defending their recent national championship. This is the fourth consecutive No. 1 recruiting class for UK.

Freshman Anthony Davis will most likely be the first player taken in the pro draft. He was player of the year in every category. After leading the Cats to another national title, Davis will soon be a millionaire.

The rule that these talented teen-agers have to go to college at least one year is ridiculous. After all, it’s a free country. The NBA and the NCAA should get together and change this rule. Why make these kids go a year of college? Obviously they will be gone after one season. They are not going to be working on a degree for a year. They will take the minimum classes to be eligible and coast through the first semester and likely even drop out in the spring term.

Davis, along with fellow freshmen Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Marquis Teague and sophomores Doron Lamb and Terrence Jones have until April 29 to decide whether to enter the NBA draft. UK will likely lose all of these players as early entrants to the NBA draft.

So the NBA draft will once again have a Wildcat flavor. Much like the 2010 draft two seasons ago when point guard John Wall was taken first, center DeMarcus Cousins fifth, Patrick Patterson (fourteenth), Eric Bledsoe (eighteenth), and Daniel Orton (twenty-ninth), all from UK. This draft set a record with five players being drafted from the same school in the first round.

Five Kentucky players, all underclassmen, are expected to be selected in the first round this year. Senior Darius Miller is expected to be a high second round pick.

So come June 28 when Commissioner David Stern calls out the names of the newest NBA millionaires in waiting, several more Wildcats will leave the Bluegrass for the riches of pro basketball.