By Whitney Spencer
When you think back through the history of college basketball, there are several top programs that consistently come to mind. In attempting to rank them, you would think of overall national titles, conference titles, the number of games won, etc. Earlier this month, Jeff Sagarin’s all-time ranking of 330 programs in men’s college basketball became public. And some of his choices have been topics of heavy debate ever since.
Sagarin created his list from top to bottom, based on wins and losses, scoring margin and a rating that is a combination of the two. Once his calculations were complete, his No. 1 team turned out to be none other than the University of Kentucky Wildcats. While Kentucky may be able to claim the top ranking in the 1990s, when they were national champions twice, I think it is a stretch to name them ahead of the storied University of California Los Angeles.
UCLA was probably just as stunned as basketball fans around the country, besides those in Big Blue Nation. UCLA still leads with 11 national titles, compared to Kentucky’s seven. According to Sagarin’s ranking, only NCAA tournament wins count for double in his calculations. And Kentucky leads UCLA with a 100-99 advantage on that front. Still, this ranking wasn’t the only call that left me scratching my head.
One of Louisville’s biggest rivals in the Big East is the University of Connecticut Huskies, but even I have to give them some type of credit, sitting at No. 54, below Colorado, Iowa State and Saint Louis. Since 1999, Connecticut has won two national titles, been to three Final Fours, five Elite Eights, and had nine NCAA appearances. Though they were pretty much non-existent for many years prior to 1999, they have managed to do more in the last 10 years than those other teams combined. I would say that they should slide up the list a bit.
I also question how teams who have won no NCAA titles can be ranked in the Top 20. Iowa and Minnesota, ranked 10th and 14th respectively, have combined to reach four Final Fours. Iowa hasn’t reached the regional final since 1987, while Minnesota didn’t reach the tournament until 1972, an appearance that was later vacated by the NCAA. Also, though Ohio State has one national title and 10 Final Fours, I think Michigan State, with two national titles and seven Final Fours, should have been the second-ranked Big Ten team, after Indiana, which deserves its No. 5 ranking.
I understand the process that Sagarin follows in order to create this list of all-time programs, but I just find it a little hard to digest that the whole goal for playing college basketball, the NCAA title, doesn’t hold any extra weight, while tournament wins do. Ideally, a team that has been able to run through the grueling tournament and win double-digit titles deserves to be the best team. Logically, a team that has never won a title, and has appeared in the Final Four only four times, should not be ranked higher than a three-time national champion with 14 Final Four appearances. These are just my opinions, but I believe that these numbers don’t lie.
