12-10-2007, 08:03 AM
Prologue - The 40 Greatest Basketball Programs of All-Time
Like any other such list, the only true purpose this is likely to serve is to cause much consternation amongst the fans of some program or another to wonder why their favorite isn’t ranked higher than ‘fill-in-the-blank’.
Though I am a fan of a program that often reacts this way in regard to other such lists, the question of which are the greatest basketball programs of all-time has still always intrigued me. Going into this knowing my biases was important. So here are some of those biases:
1) That (in alpha order), Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and UCLA are the 5 greatest programs of all-time, I had little doubt. I really don’t think anyone else would dispute this either, but I could be wrong.
2) That at one point in time Indiana belonged in the above, but since their last championship in 1987 have lost ground to the point where Louisville is about to pass them.
3) That St. John’s gets very little credit for being an historically good program and that the NIT gets totally overlooked when these lists are made.
4) That way too much emphasis is placed on all NCAA tourneys, as though they are all equal – which they are not. Obviously it is much tougher to win a tourney now than it was back in 1939 when it all began.
5) That not enough emphasis is placed on overall wins and winning percentage – can you imagine a similar discussion of football programs that only looked at bowl wins and not overall wins and winning percentage? No, of course not. Yet, I find, this is usually what happens on this topic.
6) And lastly, somehow I would need to take into account, besides wins and losses, the great programs that existed prior to the first NIT championship in 1938.
So, after writing these biases down, I decided that as I developed my methodology I would need to refer back to them, to determine if I was perhaps giving either too much weight or too little weight to some factor or another because of these biases.
With this, I now began to develop the methodology.
Like any other such list, the only true purpose this is likely to serve is to cause much consternation amongst the fans of some program or another to wonder why their favorite isn’t ranked higher than ‘fill-in-the-blank’.
Though I am a fan of a program that often reacts this way in regard to other such lists, the question of which are the greatest basketball programs of all-time has still always intrigued me. Going into this knowing my biases was important. So here are some of those biases:
1) That (in alpha order), Duke, Kansas, Kentucky, North Carolina, and UCLA are the 5 greatest programs of all-time, I had little doubt. I really don’t think anyone else would dispute this either, but I could be wrong.
2) That at one point in time Indiana belonged in the above, but since their last championship in 1987 have lost ground to the point where Louisville is about to pass them.
3) That St. John’s gets very little credit for being an historically good program and that the NIT gets totally overlooked when these lists are made.
4) That way too much emphasis is placed on all NCAA tourneys, as though they are all equal – which they are not. Obviously it is much tougher to win a tourney now than it was back in 1939 when it all began.
5) That not enough emphasis is placed on overall wins and winning percentage – can you imagine a similar discussion of football programs that only looked at bowl wins and not overall wins and winning percentage? No, of course not. Yet, I find, this is usually what happens on this topic.
6) And lastly, somehow I would need to take into account, besides wins and losses, the great programs that existed prior to the first NIT championship in 1938.
So, after writing these biases down, I decided that as I developed my methodology I would need to refer back to them, to determine if I was perhaps giving either too much weight or too little weight to some factor or another because of these biases.
With this, I now began to develop the methodology.