College Basketball Fantasy Draft: Anthony Davis, Cooper Flagg are top picks among best players since 2000

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to draft a fantasy team in college basketball? I know there's a select few of you reading this who are sickos to the level where you already engaged for years in such nefarious behavior, but for most, college sports have never caught on from a fantasy perspective. Today, we're changing that.

With it being 2025, and with today being the day the NFL is back, we wanted to blend the two ideas for a fun, once-in-a-quarter-century college hoops project. Being 25 years into the 21st century gives us obvious and easy reasons to reflect on college basketball since we entered the new millennium. (We previously ranked the biggest stars over the past 25 years and college basketball's most notable stories since 2000.)

Now it's time for our first college hoops fantasy draft. The sport has produced dozens of studs over the past 25 years: Zion, Psycho T, Carmelo, AD, KD, Kemba, Jimmer, JJ, Doug McBuckets and so many more. Who got drafted when? You'll have to scroll down to find out. The only stipulation for our draft: In order to be eligible, a player's career had to have started from the 1999-2000 season or later, which eliminated the likes of Shane Battier and Juan Dixon.

Our six-man roster of college hoops scribes opted for an eight-round, snake-style draft that included seven players (five starters, two guys off the bench) and a head coach. The draft order was drawn at random and here's how it landed.

1. Isaac Trotter 2. Cameron Salerno 3. Kyle Boone 4. David Cobb 5. Matt Norlander 6. Gary Parrish

This was a draft exclusively about how good these players were in college, not their NBA careers. So, who picked the best fantasy team? Every GM makes their case. You can decide and let us know. We'll roll out the teams in the same order as the draft.

Trotter: AD at No. 1 + an array of super-fun guards

Greg Oden and Anthony Davis are the only two freshmen who have won the National Defensive Player of the Year award since the turn of the century.

Both are on my team.

I built the best two-way frontcourt in this exercise, unequivocally. Oden and Davis were just different. They form a terrifying duo that constructs a "Do Not Enter" sign around the rim, and I wanted to surround them with vroom-vroom guards. At the 2-3 turn, I jumped at the opportunity to land both Jalen Brunson and Kemba Walker. Brunson and Walker were top-three guards on my board. Both were All-Americans. Both won a national title. Oh, and Brunson has a second championship and the 2018 National Player of the Year award on his resume.

Brunson and Walker paired with bigs like Davis and Oden comprise my Core Four, but the rest of the additions make this team a wagon. I needed a big ball-handler, so Cade Cunningham in the fifth round was the choice. He was so, so nasty at Oklahoma State. He's the third No. 1 pick on my roster. That's tied for the most of any team in this exercise. I was not leaving the draft without Illinois' One-Man Fastbreak Dee Brown or Russdiculous: Louisville's Russ Smith provides a terrifying point-of-attack defender who also won a national championship. I smelled a run on coaches starting after Norlander tabbed Coach K, so I snagged my No. 1 coach of the last 25 years. Bill Self is the goods on the dry-erase board, and his string of 18 conference titles in 25 seasons is untouchable.

So to recap, I have:

• Best coach
• Best frontcourt
• Two of the three best guards from the last 25 years
• Three No. 1 picks
• Six of my seven players either won or played in a national championship. Winners!

I rest my case.

Salerno: Flagg the centerpiece on a blue blood-laden roster

I had a tough decision to make at 1.02 when Trotter selected Davis at No. 1. I could've gone in several different directions, but elected to go with the most recent best player in college basketball. Flagg is also versatile enough that it didn't matter who I picked later on because I would feel comfortable playing him in any lineup. Fredette is one of my all-time favorite college basketball players. His shooting is something that would make him a lottery pick even today because the NBA game has changed over the last decade.

Trotter once again sniped my pick in the third round by taking Jalen Brunson. I ended up pivoting to take Griffin because his career at Oklahoma was electric. Lonzo Ball had one of the most underrated freshman seasons this century at UCLA, and Jahlil Okafor was the best player on the best team in college basketball during the 2014-15 season. I closed the draft by selecting Evan Turner and Karl-Anthony Towns. I debated on several players with my last pick, but decided to go with the former No. 1 overall pick in the 2015 NBA Draft. I considered Draymond Green with my last player pick because every team needs an enforcer to make a run.

Lastly, I went with Jay Wright as my coach. I decided to wait until the last round because coaches in this draft are similar to kickers/defenses in fantasy football. Wright had an amazing coaching stint at Villanova, and despite several big jobs opening in recent years, appears to have no interest in getting back into coaching. I will gladly take a coach with an extensive championship pedigree under his belt.

Boone: Zion + Jay + Trae make a dazzling core

My first four picks are all former Naismith Player of the Year winners -- led by the best athlete (Zion Williamson), the two best passers (Trae Young and Chris Paul) and the best guard scorer of the last 25 years (Jay Williams). Adding Obi Toppin to that mix is just a cherry on top to give me a versatile forward who can finish lobs and stress defenses.

Who is beating that team?

Keep scrolling and you'll see an Edey-West-Hansbrough squad that may give us fits physically, I'd concede. Well played, Norlander. But the answer is obvious: No one is beating a Zion-CP3-McDermott-Jay Williams-Trae Young starting five. No one.

There's a good chance McDermott and Kaminsky -- the 2013-14 and 2014-15 Players of the Year, respectively -- are the sixth and seventh options on this squad! With all due respect to Trotter and Salerno's teams, they'd probably walk into No. 1 scoring roles right away but may be bench options on this team.

To twist the knife on my competition I not only got incredible value on CP3 with my eighth round pick -- huzzah! -- but also made sure to reach on my preferred coach, Rick Pitino, a round early with my seventh-round selection. Pitino is the only coach to win titles at two different schools and the only to have led three different programs to Final Fours. He'd have no problem taking my team to the promised land.

Cobb: KD + Redick's shooting talent leads a dynamic group

Unlike these other teams with illogical positional construction and/or too many ball-dominant players, my team is actually a squad that would work. Kevin Durant is a rangy scorer, JJ Redick is a sniper, Jameer Nelson is a distributor, Emeka Okafor is the paint enforcer and Tony Allen is the perimeter stopper. Then, off the bench we can either go small with Draymond Green at center. Or, we can play big with him next to Okafor and Durant. Damian Lillard brings similar versatility with his ability to play either guard position. We'll leave those decisions up to two-time national champion coach Billy Donovan.

A brief rundown of my team, which features the 2004, 2006 and 2007 Naismith Award winners.

Durant: One of three freshmen this century to average 25-plus points. He won NPOY in 2007 during a legendary one-and-done campaign with Texas.

Okafor: The 2004 NCAA Tournament's MOP and one of two high-major players this century to average 4-plus blocks in three consecutive seasons.

Redick: No high-major player has ever made more triples in a four-year college career than Redick. He won the 2006 Naismith Award.

Nelson: The '04 Naismith Award winner led Saint Joseph's to a 27-0 regular season and Elite Eight appearance while averaging 20.6 points, 5.3 assists and 2.8 steals.

Allen: One of the greatest defenders to ever walk the planet. Also averaged 16 points and was the Big 12 POY in '03-04 for an Oklahoma State team that went 31-4 and reached the Final Four.

Lillard: Was so elite at Weber State in the 2011-12 season that he was drafted No. 6 overall, even though he was a small guard who had played four years in the Big Sky. Yeah, he was special.

Green: One of the grittiest, toughest, nastiest, most rugged basketball players of the century, and he would be a perfect connector piece to round out a rotation that features plenty of other scoring options.

Norlander: The only roster where every guy won NPOY

This turned into a fun exercise because, as you can see, I wound up with the best team. I think some of my colleagues lost sight of what we were doing here. This is a fantasy draft for fantasy sports. You're trying to pick the players who accrue the best numbers and are stat monsters. This isn't about "positional size" or putting together an imaginary team to play another imaginary team of studs in a game that is never going to happen. It's also not about picking players who went on to NBA greatness or what their draft stock was; that's got nothing to do with their college prowess.

We're taking guys as they were purely as college talents.

I am the only one who has a roster filled -- at EVERY spot -- with stars who won National Player of the Year awards. Oh, and I have the undisputed greatest coach of the past 50 years, if not ever.

I started by drafting the only player in 40-plus years to repeat as NPOY (Edey), who is a behemoth and objectively one of the five most dominant players of the 21st century. With my second pick, I took the guy who has inarguably the greatest college career this century (Psycho T). Somehow, Morrison was still on the board at pick 17, so that was a gift, and then an even better shooter (Hield) was waiting for me a few picks later.

Anyone who knows how to win in fantasy understands that depth is how you get a championship. That in mind, it's my other three who push me over the top. Ford is easily one of best point guard talents of the past 25 years. He shared NPOY honors in 2002-03 with ... another one of my players! David West, who real heads know is one of the 20 best all-around college ballers since 2000, is first off my bench. And he's alongside Valentine, who is the only player of any drafted to average at least 19 points, seven rebounds and seven assists in a season this century.

AND I have Krzyzewski, who provably was the best coach of high-end talent ever? That settles it; everyone else is playing for second. (I give the nod to Boone.)

Parrish: Curry + Carmelo highlight an eclectic squad

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, I was slotted last in our fantasy mock draft. Fine. I still ended up with Steph Curry, a former college basketball star at Davidson who has established himself as an all-time great with the Golden State Warriors in the NBA. Next, I took Carmelo Anthony — another future Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer who, of course, led Syracuse to the 2003 national championship. After that, I grabbed Michael Beasley, the former Kansas State star who broke a lot of the same Big 12 records in 2008 that Kevin Durant set a year earlier. After that, I selected Dwyane Wade, a Final Four participant from Marquette and, yes, another Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer. Then Joakim Noah, a two-time national champion at Florida, rounded out my starting lineup.

What's not to like?

I have shooting (Curry) and playmaking (Wade) in my backcourt, a dynamic and championship-winning player on the wing (Anthony), an other-worldly producer at power forward (Beasley) and a real tone-setter in the middle who, after leaving Florida, went on to be an NBA Defensive Player of the Year (Noah). Off the bench, it's another strong lead guard (John Wall) and a versatile wing who can lock-down opposing perimeter players (Victor Oladipo). And my coach is Kelvin Sampson, who has a reputation for getting the absolute most out of his rosters.

Also worth noting: My coach and three of my players have appeared in a Final Four. And two of my players are national champions. So we have the required culture to achieve big things.

Again, what's not to like?

CBS College Basketball Fantasy Draft Order/Results

Best players undrafted include: Andrew Bogut, Johni Broome, Trey Burke, Nick Collison, Drew Gooden, Frank Mason, Luka Garza, Kevin Love, Shabazz Napier, Thomas Robinson, Brandon Roy, Jared Sullinger, Oscar Tshiebwe