In September I wrote about the 16 most followed basketball players on Twitter. I decided to revisit that list and see who had been gaining followers. The leader in September was Shabazz Muhammad, with 84,135 followers. No one else even had 60,000. But Shabazz only gained a little over 3,000 followers during the season, despite using Twitter regularly.
Nerlens Noel, who had been in 2nd, gained more than 10 times that number during the season. We'll call that the 'Kentucky Effect'. When your coach has more Twitter followers than every other Division I head coach combined, and one of the 16 most followed players in the country is a Kentucky walk-on, then you know you're at a basketball (and Twitter) crazed school.
Of the 16 players I looked at, Shabazz gained the smallest percentage of followers during the season, and I have absolutely no explanation for this. Even Andre Dawkins – who isn't playing – increased his following by almost 6% (to Shabazz's 4%).
Regardless, here are the September 2012, and March 2013 counts.
| player | team | September | March | Difference |
| Shabazz Muhammad | UCLA | 84,135 | 87,355 | 3.7% |
| Nerlens Noel | Kentucky | 59,420 | 92,564 | 35.8% |
| Seth Curry | Duke | 50,374 | 70,251 | 28.3% |
| Dexter Strickland | UNC | 49,860 | 55,839 | 10.7% |
| Kyle Wiltjer | Kentucky | 46,338 | 55,750 | 16.9% |
| Cody Zeller | Indiana | 33,472 | 51,548 | 35.1% |
| Reggie Bullock | UNC | 32,132 | 40,231 | 20.1% |
| Leslie McDonald | UNC | 29,167 | 32,033 | 8.9% |
| Quinn Cook | Duke | 27,682 | 36,080 | 23.3% |
| PJ Hairston | UNC | 27,005 | 35,714 | 24.4% |
| Alex Poythress | Kentucky | 25,908 | 36,326 | 28.7% |
| Jarrod Polson | Kentucky | 25,780 | 37,917 | 32.0% |
| Archie Goodwin | Kentucky | 24,890 | 35,243 | 29.4% |
| Christian Watford | Indiana | 24,355 | 32,602 | 25.3% |
| James Michael McAdoo | UNC | 24,030 | 28,290 | 15.1% |
| Andre Dawkins | Duke | 21,217 | 22,557 | 5.9% |
