Shabazz Napier led the Connecticut Huskies to an unlikely NCAA title in April, but he also earned his degree from UConn this spring. Napier will be drafted into the NBA on Thursday.

"I’ll tell you something that’s funny and people may think is weird -- I feel as though me walking across the stage for my graduation was more important than me winning a national championship,” Napier said Wednesday. "That put the icing on the cake for me, to have my degree is something that I always worked to. It’s definitely cool to be here, but I stayed my fourth year just to get my degree."

Napier was a fixture on the Dean’s List during his time in college, majoring in sociology.

"At the end of the day I was always told that basketball can bring you many places, which is true, but you can probably only play competitive basketball until you are 40 or so,” Napier recalled. "My mother always told me that education is always going to stay with you, no matter what happens. God forbid anything happen to you on the basketball court, your education will always stay with you."