The AP Top 25 men’s college basketball poll was originally designed in the 1940s to foster conversation among fans.
There are few more heated debates than over who is the greatest single team in history.
To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the poll, The Associated Press compiled data from every weekly poll through last season to determine an all-time No. 1, and Kentucky edged North Carolina for the top spot on the list. Such cumulative standings essentially reward top programs for sustained excellence, and does nothing to help determine the greatest teams ever to take the floor.
Good luck getting coaches, who should know as well as anyone, to identify the best of the best.
“I wish I had a little time to think about it,” said Michigan State coach Tom Izzo, whose first inclination was the Tyler Hansbrough-led North Carolina team that beat his Spartans for the 2009 national championship.
“They were good, man. That was a good team,” Izzo said. “They went right through everybody.”
Izzo then pondered the 1975-76 team from Indiana, the last to finish an unbeaten season, which he remembered watching while in college. And the UCLA teams of John Wooden in the 1960s and ‘70s, which he recalled watching as a kid. More recently, there were the dominant UNLV teams of the late 1980s and early ’90s that fundamentally changed the way the game is played.
“You know,” Izzo said, “that Kentucky team that one year would be one.”
That would be the 1995-96 team led by Derek Anderson, Tony Delk, Ron Mercer and Antoine Walker, which featured no fewer than nine future NBA players. The Wildcats went 34-2 that season, avenged one of its only two losses against UMass in the Final Four, then routed Syracuse in the final national championship game played in a true basketball arena.
“I think that was one of the greatest teams of all time,” said Rick Pitino, who coached that team and is now the coach at St. John’s. “The SEC was really, really tough back then, and you look at the margin of victory of that team in conference play, that was amazing to me. I thought the second unit that year could have won the national championship. That’s how strong we were.”
There have been seven teams that went wire-to-wire at No. 1 in the AP poll and capped their seasons with a national championship, and all of them are deserving of recognition. Especially so are the five that went undefeated: Bill Russell and San Francisco in 1955-56, a trio of seasons at UCLA under John Wooden, and the Hoosiers of Bobby Knight.
Nobody had seen anyone like Russell, certainly not Iowa, which watched him go for 26 points and 27 rebounds in the title game. The Dons won it even without All-American guard K.C. Jones, who was deemed ineligible for the game.
The team would make history for having the first all-Black starting lineup in a championship game, and beating all-white Kentucky for the title. But the Miners of Bobby Joe Hill, David Lattin and Willie Cager were dominant all season.
The first of the Bruins’ three unbeaten championship seasons — the others came in 1972 and ’73 — may have been the best that Wooden put on the court. It was the first season of Lew Alcindor, who would later become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
David Thompson averaged 26 points per game, and teamed with 7-foot-2 Tom Burleson and 5-7 guard Monty Towe to end UCLA’s seven-year title run in the Final Four. The Wolfpack then beat Marquette for the championship.
The first of Knight’s three championship teams was almost certainly his best. The Hoosiers went 18-0 in the Big Ten for a second straight year, led by Quinn Buckner, NCAA Tournament MVP Kent Benson and national player of the year Scott May.
The Cougars were upset by Jim Valvano and North Carolina State in the title game, but the Phi Slama Jama bunch of Clyde Drexler, Larry Micheaux and Hakeem Olajuwon may have been one of the most entertaining teams in history.
The Runnin’ Rebels of towel-chomping coach Jerry Tarkanian may be the best team that failed to cut down nets. Larry Johnson, Stacey Augmon and Greg Anthony were upset by Duke in the Final Four.
The first repeat champion since UCLA’s seven-year run is remembered most for Christian Laettner’s turnaround buzzer-beater to topple Kentucky in the NCAA Tournament. But the Blue Devils also had to beat Michigan’s Fab Five for the title.
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