A few weeks ago I looked at who appeared likely to stay in the NBA draft and jotted down the names of those players I figured the Pistons had no chance to get with the 15th pick. I came up with a dozen – 12 players who look like locks or near certainties to be taken before the Pistons get their chance on draft night.

On Monday, Chad Ford of ESPN.com wrote an interesting story on a “tier system” many teams use in preparation for the draft – ranking players in groups, based on ability, and then slotting them within their tiers based on best fit for your team. The idea is to meld the “best player available” philosophy with a realistic look at how he’d fit with your current roster makeup.

In Tier 1 – no surprise – Ford lists Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, the sure-fire 1-2 picks to Portland and Seattle. In Tier 2 he lists six players – Florida teammates Corey Brewer and Al Horford, Ohio State’s Mike Conley, Chinese 7-footer Yi Jianlian, Georgetown’s Jeff Green and North Carolina’s Brandan Wright.

Four players comprise Tier 3 – Kansas soph Julian Wright, Washington freshman big man Spencer Hawes, Florida State’s Al Thornton and Florida’s Joakim Noah.

That’s a dozen – the same dozen names I jotted down a few weeks ago. And when Monday’s 5 p.m. deadline for staying in the draft came and went, the Pistons got good news as players like Hawes and Green decided to stay in the draft – pushing better players down to 15 than the Pistons otherwise would have been able to consider. (Three other players who might have gone before 15 pulled out of the draft earlier: Green’s Georgetown teammate, 7-footer Roy Hibbert; 18-year-old French wing Nicholas Batum; and athletic Kansas power forward Darrell Arthur.)

That leaves the Pistons to choose, most likely, from the best of the leftovers in Tier IV – Georgia Tech freshman teammates Thaddeus Young (another who decided on Monday to stay in the draft) and Javarris Crittenton, Texas A&M point guard Acie Law, Eastern Washington combo guard Rodney Stuckey and USC shooting guard Nick Young.

Any of them would be coveted and welcomed by the Pistons is my guess, but here’s a stab at ranking them in some order within their tier from the team’s perspective.

5. Acie Law – Law might be the most NBA-ready of the bunch, he’s tough, he defends and he was college basketball’s version of Mr. Big Shot last season, knocking down huge end-of-game shots all winter for A&M.

But he isn’t a true point guard, he’s a little undersized to play two-guard and he’s not a top-end athlete. There’s nothing about Law’s game that jumps off the TV screen at you, but he’s a pure, unadulterated basketball player.

The thing that separates Law from the group is that he has the lowest ceiling but the highest floor – there’s not much boom-or-bust about Law. He’ll probably spend a good decade in the NBA, but he might never be considered good enough to start for a quality team – or he might become somebody like Mark Jackson, a solid player who ranked just below the elite at his position during a long and solidly productive career.

4. Javarris Crittenton – Crittenton calls to mind a young Chauncey Billups. He has ideal size for a point guard at 6-foot-5 and is considered an above average athlete.

But you’re going to have growing paints with Crittenton, only 19. There are nights he looks like Jason Kidd and others he looks like Smush Parker.

Crittenton comes with a much higher risk quotient than Law. He could be an All-Star in three or four years – or he could be a washout. Though Crittenton appears to have point guard instincts, he also was wildly turnover prone at times for Georgia Tech – he averaged nearly four a game.

Because of the gamble Crittenton represents and because he plays a position that only becomes a critical need if the Pistons don’t re-sign Billups – and free agency doesn’t open until three days after the draft – my hunch is the Pistons will ultimately pass on Crittenton if he’s still there.

Crittenton, by the way, appears more likely than anyone from Ford’s Tier IV to leap into the top dozen. In dire need of a point guard are Crittenton’s hometown Atlanta Hawks, who have the Nos. 3 and 11 picks. If the Hawks pass on Conley, the top-rated point guard, at No. 3 – as they appear inclined to do – they would have their choice of Crittenton or Law at No. 11, and indications are they prefer Crittenton.

3. Nick Young – It’s tough choosing between the Youngs, but without an obvious backup anymore for Tayshaun Prince with the Carlos Delfino trade, finding someone who can give the Pistons 10 to 12 creditable minutes a game at small forward becomes an off-season priority – so we’ll go with Thaddeus Young by a nose over Nick Young.

But it wouldn’t be easy passing on Southern Cal’s 6-foot-7 Young – and, by the way, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Young’s backcourt mate at USC, 6-foot-4 Gabe Pruitt, given consideration with the Pistons’ pick at 27 if he’s still on the board.

USC’s Young has off-the-charts athleticism and great size for his position, though he probably needs to add some bulk. He shot 44 percent from the college 3-point line as a junior and he’s a plus rebounder, too, averaging 6.6 as a sophomore and 4.6 as a junior when the Trojans added more size to their lineup.

The knock on Young has been that he tends to float. If the Pistons agree with that assessment, they might shy away from him given Joe Dumars’ stated intention to find players this summer with a certain attitude and intensity.

2. Thaddeus Young – Like his teammate, Crittenton, Young might not be ready to contribute for another year or two after just one season at Georgia Tech. But he appears to be the prototypical NBA player of the future – long and athletic with the quickness and ability to guard multiple positions, a more explosive version of Tayshaun Prince without the refinement to his game just yet.

Young appears to have good shooting skills but is not yet a consistent shooter. He’s at his best in the open floor and needs to develop better ballhandling skills to take full advantage of his quickness and ability to beat his man off the dribble.

1. Rodney Stuckey – No, the Pistons did not make Stuckey a guarantee that they would draft him at No. 15, as was reported a few weeks ago. That was a rumor started by an agent who hoped to take that news to Stuckey in order to win him as a client; Stuckey chose a different agent, regardless.

But he makes a lot of sense for the Pistons in that Stuckey is seen as someone who could play both backcourt positions. His strength is his ability to get to the basket, an area where the Pistons have a void. That was the reason they signed Flip Murray last summer. Stuckey is potentially a vastly improved version of Murray.

Stuckey will have to improve as a perimeter shooter in the NBA to capitalize on his slashing ability. Because he dominated weaker competition in the Big Sky Conference, Stuckey didn’t focus on his perimeter stroke and saw his 3-point shooting percentage nosedive from a very respectable 37 percent as a freshman to a mere 26 percent as a sophomore. Some questioned his shot selection, but it’s hard to gauge how much of that resulted in the talent disparity between Stuckey and his teammates.

But Stuckey’s other numbers are eye-opening – 24.6 points, 4.7 rebounds and 5.5 assists a game.

He’d be very tempting if he were still on the board at 15 and right now it looks like it’s slightly better than 50-50 that he will be.