The 5 Best Freshmen From Kentucky's John Calipari Era

A week ago, JJ Zachariason took a look at this year's Kentucky team and compared it to other great college basketball teams we've seen since the turn of the century.

We can see that, by the numbers, this year's team is the second-best college hoops squad since the turn of the century.

Just 12 days ago, Bryan Mears did a comparison of Anthony Davis' 2012 Kentucky team to this year's squad. He found that, by the numbers, this year's undefeated Wildcats would best the 2012 National Title team.

These two articles got me thinking -- Who are the best freshmen in the John Calipari era? Are any of this year's freshmen good enough to even make the top five?

So, I started by looking at each freshman since Calipari took over the reins in 2009, and from there, pulled a lot of numbers for each individual player. The one number I ultimately decided to rank these players by is PER, or Player Efficiency Rating, because it best shows a player's overall impact and how efficient he was while on the court.

PER doesn't really penalize good players who don't receive a lot of minutes, which otherwise could pose a problem for the 2015 Kentucky team. In the same manner, I decided to only look at each player's per 40-minute numbers, rather than their per game numbers, to account for the discrepancy in minutes per game.

With that being said, can this year's team boast anyone from the top five? If not, who are the best five freshmen of the Calipari era?

Let's take a look.