Top 5 College Basketball Teams of All Time :: essays research papers

"They are very, very, very good." But are they one of the greatest teams of all time? 1. 1968 UCLA Bruins (29-1) Hard to pick just one of the Lew Alcindor squads as the best, so we defer to John Wooden: "I've never come out and said it, but it would be hard to pick a team over the 1968 team." The Bruins, playing with an injured Alcindor, suffered a mid-season loss to Houston and Elvin Hayes in the Astrodome, but proved that was a fluke in the tourney semifinal, burying the Cougars 101-69. The final was also cake, a 78-55 win over UNC. How'd they do it? To start, they had Alcindor, the best player in college basketball history, who averaged 26 points and 16 rebounds per game. Junior guard Lucius Allen, senior Mike Warren, Jr., Lynn Shackleford and senior Mike Lynn also averaged in double figures for the season. 2. 1996 Kentucky Wildcats (34-2) Rick Pitino's Wildcats were so good that they could have been a decent NBA team in 1995-96 -- Antoine Walker, Tony Delk, Walter McCarty, Derek Anderson and Ron Mercer would all be first-round picks, and Mark Pope was a second-round draft choice. Even though Kentucky lost two regular-season games, they established themselves as one of the all-time great teams by destroying the competition in the Big Dance, winning their six tourney games by an average of 21 points. The Wildcats were, by far, the deepest team in recent college basketball history, with so many stars that some were amazed that Pitino was able to keep it all together. "Rick's done a phenomenal job," Providence coach Pete Gillen said. "I mean, how does he keep Ron Mercer happy playing 12 minutes a game? This guy was maybe the No. 1 high school player in the country last year, according to some magazines or newspapers or gurus. Rick's got to be the greatest psychologist since Sigmund Freud. He's my idol. He could sell freaking snow to the Eskimos. It's unbelievable." 3. 1976 Indiana Hoosiers (32-0) Over the two seasons that culminated in their 1976 national championship, the Hoosiers, coached by the ornery Bob Knight, went 63-1. To win the title in Philly, Indiana, behind a combined 51 points from Scott May and Kent Benson and a great all-around performance by Quinn Buckner, defeated Big Ten rival Michigan, 86-68. To get to the final, Indiana had defeated the 1975 national champion UCLA Bruins.