Well, there's a few things.....Some of it has to do with coaching. Prime example is with George Mason going to the final four a few years ago. Those guys weren't recruited very heavily, but they got on a team with a good coaching staff who know how to get the most out of their players. George Mason had no NBA players, but they beat teams with NBA players on it, especially UConn which was stacked.
Another part of it is test scores. Some guys are great, but they don't have high enough scores to get into division 1 right away, so they go to JUCO usually. Sometimes things just don't work out at JUCO. I think Dendy had this. He's good, but he was ranked 63rd coming out of HS then went to JUCO..he was recruited less while in JUCO than he was in HS.
Also about test scores, they may get a high enough score to be eligible, but some of the schools are very good academically such as a Michigan...so if they score really low but are still eligible, some coaches still might not be wanting to take a risk of losing them to academics.
