Top 25 college basketball programs of the century

[Wizard of Westroads]

I don't have a KenPom subscription, got to it through his tweet:

https://twitter.com/kenpomeroy/status/1551663725962096641

[Jasper67]

Kenpom's top programs of the last 25 years:

https://kenpom.com/programs.php

8. Nova
17. UConn
30. X
41. Marquette
42. Creighton
45. GT
50. Butler

Butler played in 2 national titles games and is 50th?

UCONN has 4 titles and is only 17th... lol

I’m with you. I’ll take a programs down years if the trade off is that I get one more national title. And I think that any program would do the same.

The funny thing is that Duke is ranked #1 and UConn #17, but head to head, it was UConn who prevented Duke from having 5 NCs in the past 25 years, beating Duke in the ‘99 title game and again in ‘04 in the Final Four.

Any top 25 list has to be understood in terms of its criteria. I’m sure that by Ken Pom’s criteria, his list makes total sense and that it’s all about consistency in his computer ratings. But I don’t buy that. I’ll go for the teams which hit the high points every time. In that spirit, here would be my top ten over the past 25 years:

1. North Carolina
2. UConn
3. Duke
4. Kansas
5. Kentucky
6. Michigan State
7. Florida
8. Villanova
9. Louisville
10. Syracuse

[Jasper67]

Butler played in 2 national titles games and is 50th?

UCONN has 4 titles and is only 17th... lol

Need a subscription for the details... If this is just raw Kenpom average then it's not surprising that UConn is where it is. There were some shaky years at the back end of the AAC, and a couple of those runs to a NCin which they were not a season-long dominant team. Without seeing it myself, I would guess the programs that year-in-year out are around the Top 20 are the ones who scored well on this. My guess at Top 10:
1. Duke
2. UK
3. UNC
4. Kansas
5. MSU
6. Ohio St.
7. Arizona
8. Nova
9. Gonzaga
10. Florida / UCLA / Oklahoma / Louisville / Cuse (tie)

If your criteria are who were the best teams from beginning to end of the season, then yes, you discount a team that had a late run but didn’t play at that level all season long. That’s obviously what Ken Pom’s computer program is designed to do.

The way I look at it, college basketball is a sport at the developmental level. By that I mean that it is the coach’s job to take a different group of players each year, develop their individual skills, and mold them as a unit to become the best they can be by season’s end. In that view, late season wins are more important than early season wins because they demonstrate a team’s continuous improvement. So, any team that wins a NC or makes a run to the F4 is accomplishing what every team hoped to do at the start of the season.

With regard to the specific case of UConn, they were in fact a dominant team right out of the gate in 2011, going 10-0 in their pre-conference schedule and beating #2 Michigan State & #8 Kentucky along the way. Although they were only 9-9 in the Big East regular season, they didn’t suddenly get hot in the NCAA tournament. Before that they blew through the Big East tournament, winning 5 games in 5 days. After beginning the season 10-0, they ended the season on an 11-0 run. To me, their 9-9 record in the BE regular season was not a sign of their weakness but showed how incredibly strong the Big East was that year.