full ranking of all College Basketball program and a decade by decade breakdown is located at this link

Source: Sports-reference.com

Tools used: adobe illustrator, excel

That’s quite the slope for UCLA

Thanks for the post and the link. This would look quite a bit different if we just used the past 30 years.

They won 10 championships in 12 years, a pantheon dynasty.

The Wooden Era

Just keep in mind that until the early to late 1960s, the NIT was the premier basketball tourney in the US which lead to a national champion, not the NCAA. Adolph Rupp, who couldn't get anywhere in the NIT created the spectacular of the NCAA and got his early wins by refusing to compete with other Basketball powers.

That is because they attended the NCAA tourney instead of the NIT during this era.

What I'm most interested in is how Duke appears to have lost a point from 1993 to '94. What happened?

Points were deducted for Christian Laettner's post-clock shot heard 'round the world.

(I keed)

My buddy never lets me forget the time I picked Louisville to win it all and they got bounced in the opening game of the entire tournament.

I’d really like to see Florida’s. First final four in 1994, multiple after that and 32 points in two years. Unfortunately a pretty flat line outside of that.

Nevermind, I think I found them. If I’m following the line right. Is Florida the next team after Louisville? I’m seeing first bump in 1994, big jump 2006-2008, and some jumps afterwards.

This is terribly misleading. The NCAA tournament was only 25 teams in 1964 when Wooden won his first. Win one game and you’re now in the Sweet 16. Hell, in 1965, it was even less at 23 teams. Also, only league champions were invited to the tournament.

Duke Sucks.

...where my Fark bois at?

Not really misleading at all, still have to make the sweet sixteen.

Glad to see my alma mater, Connecticut, up with the big dogs.

Really hope Mike Woodson can build on what’s he’s started at Indiana. They’re a major program that’s been either dormant or getting in its own way for decades. Gotta recruit within state better, a lot of talent here that cannot end up Big 10 Rivals (like the #1 recruit in the country for next year is from Indianapolis, but he’s going to Mich St).

This graph includes some vacated wins for Louisville around the 2011-2015 era

Thanks for catching that. I have revised it. Duke can rejoice as they are 2 points above Kansas now.

So Kentucky is still better than 99.9% of college programs under your theory anyways. Get bent.

Weird hostility...

[removed]

[deleted]

Weird stupid take.

The winner of the NCAA tournament was almost always a stronger contender then the winner of the NIT.

The NCAA won all three years they played head to head.

So this argument that the NCAA was easy wins prior to the 50’s is just dumb.

I think using the same point system but starting in the year 2000 could also be interesting

As a layman who doesn't give a shit about college basketball, I thought it was interesting. Certainly I had never heard of NIT. Honestly, it just seems strange that someone would get annoyed enough with that statement to comment and defend a college basketball team in the 50s. Like, who cares?

I mean he clearly cared enough to make up what was basically a lie?

Why can’t I be upset about that? Why do you care so much about me proving him wrong?

Notice he didn’t even have the balls to respond when called out.

You didn't say anything in your original comment other than Kentucky is good, get bent. That's why I'm calling you out - to me, either of you could be right or lying. And, newsflash, you haven't proved him wrong. He used a couple sentences to mention names that an interested viewer could use to look up and do their own research. You just said "Kentucky is the best," which is not an argument or proving anything.

>You didn't say anything in your original comment other than Kentucky is good, get bent.

Yeah. And the comment I responded to say nothing other Kentucky bad.

>That's why I'm calling you out - to me, either of you could be right or lying.

It’s called look it up. See who is right. Hint it’s me.

>And, newsflash, you haven't proved him wrong. He used a couple sentences to mention names that an interested viewer could use to look up and do their own research. You just said "Kentucky is the best," which is not an argument or proving anything.

Are you this dudes alt or something.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Invitation_Tournament

> The champions of both the NCAA and NIT tournaments played each other for three seasons during World War II. From 1943 to 1945, the American Red Cross sponsored a postseason charity game between each year's tournament champions to raise money for the war effort.[23] The series was described by Ray Meyer as not just benefit games, but as "really the games for the national championship".[24] The NCAA champion prevailed in all three games.[25]

>The Helms Athletic Foundation retrospectively selected the NIT champion as its national champion for 1938 (Temple) and chose the NIT champion over the NCAA champion once, in 1939 (Long Island).[26] More recently, the mathematically based Premo-Porretta Power Poll published in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia retrospectively ranked teams for each season prior to 1949, the year in which the Associated Press poll was implemented. For the period when the tournaments overlapped between 1939 and 1948, Premo-Porretta ranked the NIT champion ahead of the NCAA champion twice (1939 and 1941) and the NCAA champion ahead of the NIT champion eight times.[27]

No where did I say Kentucky was the best.

Didn’t programs play in both tournaments back then too

Should be some kind of a point deduction for years in which a program failed to make the NCAA tournament IMO.

[deleted]

Not for long, hopefully.

worst fanbase, too

Does this data not include the 2022 NCAA tournament as well?

Said the Kansas fan.

yes, the best fanbase

[deleted]

w/Bill Russel for a few years

Amazing visual of what a single, exceptional human can influence

Is this a basketball?

Based on the Kansas spike at the end, I’m guessing ‘22 is the far right axis on the graph

You must be right. I must have been misinterpreting the labeling on the X axis

>UCLA did have a much easier road to the final four

And UCLA proceeded to stomp everything on their way to 10 of 12 national championships. So at most they got an extra 2-8 pts from the off years when they didn't win it, assuming they finished a spot or two worse in those two years.

Russell played for the University of San Francisco. You might be thinking of Bill Walton or Lew Alcindor.

Living in Louisville this really is the most annoying time of year. Indiana fans to the north Louisville fans in the city and Kentucky fans in the city and all over the state. Fighting and arguing all month until their team is eliminated. And if one wins, absolute chaos.

So named because the coach gave the program such a big woody.

Seriously, though, when Wooden first arrived at UCLA, basketball wasn’t even a varsity sport. His first challenge was convincing the athletic department to take it on as a varsity sport, with full scholarships for all team members.

[removed]

Wooden invented the fast break and the full court zone press. He was the first college coach to recognize that a well conditioned team could win by keeping up the game tempo and exhausting the other team. Also the first to recognize that building strength and endurance in the gym was as important as working on skills.

Leave us alone, we have like, 3 wins this season.

Without those 12 years they’d just be another gray line.

Instead of this rubric I would look into the points difference at the end of each match and work on that. Otherwise it’s way too heavily weighted.

For example, imagine a final where the winner gets decided by a half court three point buzzer beater. That game was effectively a tie with luck being the deciding factor. But now the winner has double the points of the second place.

This causes a huge leapfrog effect that pushes the champions higher and higher.

That is so awesome thanks for sharing that

I know this is just the NCAA tournament graph. It would be interesting to see how it overlaps with the NIT. The NCAA tournament wasn’t always used to coronate the national champion. The NIT was the most prestigious tournament for decades. The NCAA tournament would select only 8 teams from specific regions of the US. Sometimes better schools were left out. A lot of the times the best schools declined to play in the NIT because it had more national exposure with Madison Square Garden.

[removed]

UCLA without wooden is a gray line.

You need to indicate "Men's" College Basketball Program.

I mean is animosity between Louisville and IU even really a thing? I understand the Louisville-Kentucky hate, but don't really hear much about IU-Louisville.

You’re right, sorry.

Bob Knight was a huge reason Indiana was good for so long

No worries! Let's face it, Russell took USF to back-to-back championships. That's a heck of an achievement on its own.

[removed]

There is a line. All “NCAA Tournament” statistics from before the field expanded to 64 teams are not applicable to the modern format.

From the 1940s to the 1970s there were only 16 teams invited and much of that time the NCAA tournament was not even the most prestigious, that would have been the NIT. To “make a final 4” during that era required 2 wins (your home building in most cases) vs 4(+) in modern times.

If only he had taught Purdue the press and how to break it when he played there, we'd be perennial contenders....

[removed]

[deleted]

[removed]

Unless the rubric for the point values is incorrect. The data is just wrong for teams like Michigan State. 10 Final Fours and a Title alone is more than the points they have in the table.