Seven sportswriters gather in a Slack channel to discuss ranking the top men’s college basketball programs into tiers. Below you will find the results, or perhaps more accurately: the punchline. Because we know — since there is no loyalty quite like team loyalty — that, upon perusing this, some people will think it is a joke.
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Which is fine, since the entire exercise is laughably impossible. Of course, that’s also the point. Make the old college try, publish the thing and let people agree, disagree and argue. Things we all did, too, by the way. In fact, robustly, starting at the very top.
Just who is a blue blood anymore? We all know the list that is generally accepted, but is it still accurate? And how do you weigh tradition and history against recent success? Some hefty debate centered around UConn and Indiana, in particular.
So you can imagine if tiering the top six schools was difficult, trying to figure out what to do with, say, Louisville was nearly impossible. Not to mention Gonzaga.
To clarify: We are fools, but not foolish. We did not tier every Division I school. Instead we established thoughtful and firm criteria over a few beers at a Chicago bar after the Champions Classic. That’s a true story but, hey, it worked. We opted for all of the Power 6 teams, any outside of that group that ranked in the top 80 of KenPom’s program ratings (which tracks every team since 1997), and any team that has won a national title since 1980 (we call that the UNLV rule).
Via Google Forms, we each voted on where we’d rank the schools. We purposefully didn’t put a lot of rules around what to consider while voting. Winning, championships (league and national), brand appeal, recruiting prowess all had to be taken into account, but weighing the overall vibe of the place counted, too. The survey generated a numerical value that spit out an initial list that, shall we say, had its flaws. Somehow, for example, Houston and Baylor ended up in Tier 5. We amended. We kicked around some names for the tiers, a la Stewart Mandel’s Kings & Barons college football hierarchy, but nothing felt quite right. So we added an appropriate gif to each tier instead.
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After much messaging, massaging and maneuvering, this is where we ended up. Maybe gave up is more accurate? Because we could have argued for months, and well, there is such a thing as a deadline in this business.
You, however, have the luxury of arguing forever. So please have at it.
The joke, we know, is on us. — Dana O’Neil
You would think this would be the easy part, right? Everyone knows who the blue bloods are. The list hasn’t changed in years.
Which is precisely the problem. College basketball is not a monarchy. Being born into the blue bloods should not guarantee you life rights. Kind of like Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. If you want to be part of the family, you have to do the work. Otherwise, you’re out.
Indiana is our Harry and Meghan. The Hoosiers have been classified as a blue blood for decades, despite not reaching a Final Four in decades. Going on 22 years, to be exact. Indiana is essentially still riding the Bob Knight gravy train while everyone else on the list has managed to retain relevance.
Consider: Since IU last made the Final Four in 2002, Duke has reached four Final Fours and won two championships. North Carolina owns six and three, Kansas six and two, Kentucky four and one. UCLA is the only among the elite not to grab a championship since ’02, but the Bruins have been to four Final Fours in that span. If you want to get down in the weeds, Indiana has reached the Elite Eight once since 1993.
But just as blue-blood status should not be conferred for life, it shouldn’t be sealed off for new membership, either. Welcome, UConn. Admittedly, there was debate over this one. It centered largely on the Huskies’ temporary disappearance from the upper crust after the university unwisely tried to chase football success at the expense of basketball supremacy. But five national championships won by three different coaches cannot be ignored. Nor can the projections. Back where it belongs in the Big East and led by a coach who is perfect for the current age of college hoops, UConn’s future is bright. So long as the school doesn’t interfere again. — O’Neil
What an interesting collection of almost-upper-crust programs, considering a couple of them have fallen here and others have climbed this close to the summit.
We’ve already covered Indiana’s long, steady slide. But how about Louisville’s sudden, shocking plunge? And how near to blue-blood status did Villanova get with four Final Fours and two titles in a 13-year run before Jay Wright abruptly retired? Is Arizona, which earned its first No. 1 ranking in a decade this season, upwardly mobile again? On the flip side, if 68-year-old Tom Izzo runs out of gas, does that spell the end of Michigan State as a brand name?
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This really is the in-limbo tier. The tweeners. These five programs have combined for 39 Final Four appearances and 14 NCAA championships, but there’s some separation in the “What Have You Done for Me Lately” category. Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, Indiana’s been to three Final Fours, Louisville and Arizona four each, Villanova five and Michigan State eight. Last national title? IU in 1987, Arizona in 1997, MSU in 2000, U of L in 2013 (asterisk included and whatnot) and Nova in 2018.
The Wildcats from Tucson are the odd member of this club, because they’re the only Tier 2 school without multiple national titles won by multiple head coaches. They only have four Final Fours all time and just one since that ’97 championship — but a ton of near misses with seven Elite Eight appearances in that span. Sean Miller went to three regional finals from 2011 to 2015 but never broke through. Tommy Lloyd, in Year 3, might have a team that can.
Nailing the hire matters in maintaining elite program status. Villanova won 30 games and reached another national semifinal in 2022, Wright’s last season, then went 17-17 in Kyle Neptune’s first year and have looked wobbly at times this season.
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Michigan State successfully passed the baton from national champion Jud Heathcote to Izzo, who won a title and has held the job for nearly 30 years. But there will be a ton of pressure on whoever becomes the Spartans’ third coach since 1976.
Whenever that time comes, Michigan State, try to remember you don’t have to keep it in the family. Just ask Louisville, where Kenny Payne was swallowed alive by the tall task of leading his alma mater, which almost overnight became the laughingstock of college basketball. Incredibly, a mere four years ago, the Cardinals were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll under Chris Mack. Ten years ago, they won the program’s third national championship under Rick Pitino. In that moment, coming off consecutive Final Fours, U of L was about as close to breaking into the blue-blood club as possible. Theirs is a cautionary tale that these things can change in the blink of an eye. — Kyle Tucker
We are calling this The Gonzaga Tier; perhaps you can decipher the reason. Why the special treatment? Well, this is a program unlike any other in college basketball history, and thus one awfully hard to categorize. With apologies to John Stockton et al., the Zags lacked any real notable moments before 1999, so there’s no argument to be included with the blue bloods. But in the past 25 seasons, Gonzaga has averaged 28.7 wins, made every NCAA Tournament that was held and become a marketable brand. Mark Few’s program has reached eight straight Sweet 16s, has earned a No. 1 seed four times and has finished first or second in KenPom five times since 2017.
“But … but … but Gonzaga has never won it all!”
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True, and though the Zags have played in two of the past six national title games, the lack of the ultimate prize is why they’re not in the same tier as schools above them. One can also wonder whether the Spokane Miracle will continue whenever Few — who took over as head coach before the 1999-2000 season and has won an absurd 83.5 percent of his games — calls it quits, or whether a potential move to the Big 12 changes the trajectory. Still, we’re talking about a quarter-century’s worth of sustained success at the highest level, which even blue bloods should envy. That’s deserving of its own sort of recognition … and tier. — Brian Bennett
Let’s first stipulate some facts here:
Fact No. 1: It is not easy to win a national championship. Only one team does every year.
Fact No. 2: It is not easy to reach a Final Four. The amount of variables that must break just right for your team to do so is maddening.
Fact No. 3: If you are a fan of the above programs, over the long haul, you’re probably more happy than not. This is not an embarrassment of an evaluation. Men’s basketball is important and generally supported as such, both in resources and extremely loud people in arena seats. These programs, mostly, are close to being something even more.
But they’re not. Which is an issue.
These 15 programs spent an average of nearly $13 million on men’s basketball in the last reporting cycle, per U.S. Department of Education data. Only two of them (Purdue and Cincinnati) spent less than eight figures on the sport. And this group has a total of 11 national championships among them. The only one with multiple titles is Cincinnati, and both of those pre-dated man landing on the moon. Tier 3 teams have five titles since the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, which means it took all of them to be as productive as UConn in the same span. Granted, UConn spent more than $24 million on men’s hoops last time the government checked. Maybe that’s a hint, though, more than an excuse.
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The 25 combined Final Four appearances since 1985 — some of them vacated, yes, but they did happen — underline the general relevance of this tier. It just feels …less than. We’re talking about home-gym atmospheres that can rival or surpass any for big games. We’re talking about 42 NBA Draft lottery picks since 2000. But we’re rarely talking about championships and only intermittently talking about playing on the final weekend of the season. The circumstances suggest these programs can do more. So they’re here until they do. — Brian Hamilton
This tier is looking at the one above it and wondering: Should we be flipped?
Over the last 10 NCAA Tournaments, that tier has four Final Fours and one national title. This one has nine Final Fours and a title. There are some new money college basketball programs in this group like Auburn, Texas Tech, Baylor and VCU, some historically solid programs that either haven’t reached the Final Four ever or anytime soon and then a program like Houston that was college basketball royalty in the early ’80s, spent years in a coma and resurrected itself to become one of the most consistent top programs in the country under Kelvin Sampson.
Houston is a great example of how nailing a coaching hire combined with at least one money man (Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta, in this case) can shoot a school into relevance. Scott Drew and Baylor, the 2021 national champs, also deserve mention. Drew took one of the worst jobs at the power-conference level and built a winner with staying power. It’s arguably the most impressive build … ever?
What most of these schools have in common is making smart hires and solid fan support because of it. They’re not batting 1.000, but most have nailed their hires in the last couple of decades. If we do this exercise again in 10 years, a handful of these schools could hop into the tier above them. — CJ Moore
There’s not necessarily a kind way to say this, but our penultimate tier is a little like a junk drawer.
Are these programs every-year fixtures in the national college hoops conversation? Absolutely not. Some you’ve probably even forgotten about entirely … like Mississippi State. The Bulldogs made the Final Four in 1996? Or what about Utah in 1998, arguably Rick Majerus’ most successful team? Not only did that group make the lone Final Four in modern-era program history, but it knocked off top-seeded North Carolina (with NBA legends Vince Carter and Antawn Jamison).
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The unifying theme with this tier? A lack of staying power. UNLV needed a special exemption to be included in this exercise, but it’s impossible to tell the story of college basketball without mentioning the Runnin’ Rebels dominance under Jerry Tarkanian in the late 1980s and early 1990s. (Plus, UNLV was the last program to make Duke seem like a fan-favorite underdog, which has to count for something.) The issue: UNLV has just one Sweet 16 since 1991, as the program has withered into relative anonymity. Butler was “a thing” in 2010 and 2011 — and maybe slots a tier higher if Gordon Hayward’s halfcourt heave goes in — but … Hayward missed. Then Brad Stevens left. The Bulldogs are NCAA Tournament regulars, but more of the “we’re just happy to be here” breed.
This group does cover the full spectrum of success, though, which probably makes sense for our largest tier. Consider it a castaway island of all the teams our panel didn’t know what to do with. In UNLV and NC State — whose 1983 championship came before the modern-era cutoff but, thanks to Jim Valvano’s legacy, endures — we have two title-winning programs that never sustained their best success. Then there’s the quartet of teams who have at least played in a title game, even if their ceiling is the dreaded “runners-up” affiliation: aforementioned Utah and Butler, but also Seton Hall (1989) and Georgia Tech (2004).
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That still leaves several teams unaccounted for … which is where our recency bias comes into play. Be it closer to 15 or 20 years ago, or just in the last five, a smattering of programs — six of them from the ACC, in Clemson, Florida State, Miami, Pitt, Wake Forest, and Virginia Tech — have enjoyed seasons that prove they’re better than bottom-feeders. Randy Bennett has made Saint Mary’s into a legitimate WCC foil for Gonzaga, and the Gaels have made four tournaments since 2017, but the program only has one Sweet 16 appearance, in 2010. As for USC and Arizona State, both programs have produced their fair share of pros in the last two decades, but with one combined Elite Eight in the last 20 years — by the Trojans in 2021 — “blip on the radar” feels entirely fair.
You could say the same about this entire tier. — Brendan Marks
We’ve come to the end, and the best news for this group is the view should come with a degree of perspective. Look at it this way: 90 Division I programs are ranked here, but 362 schools play D1 basketball, so 272 other programs are still looking up at you (as far as this exercise goes, at least).
What’s difficult about this final tier is the stigma that comes with landing at the bottom. There’s an impulse to make a case that some of these programs couldn’t possibly be among the worst in high-end D1 ball. Except then reality smacks.
Like Vanderbilt. The Commodores went to the NCAA Tournament five times in a six-year window (2007-12) under Kevin Stallings. They play in a cool gym in a cool city. But at the same time, the ’Dores have played in the second weekend of the dance twice since 1993, have little brand recognition in basketball and are falling further behind in an expanding SEC. Most recently, they landed last (No. 278!) among all high-major teams in the first NET rating release of this season, another sign (among many) that Jerry Stackhouse’s tenure is soon coming to an end and Vandy will be starting all over again — once again.
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Such an existence might sound really familiar to the likes of Cal and Boston College.
Northwestern and Penn State have experienced some program highlights in recent years, but that’s partially the problem. Making the NCAA Tournament counts as significant program achievements for both. The schools in the above tiers operate with different expectations.
Speaking of Big Ten schools, Nebraska and Minnesota both present moments of pause that exemplify why this task is so difficult.
The Gophers play in a major city, have 12 top-50 KenPom finishes since 1997 and eight NCAA Tournament appearances. At the same time, it’s impossible to ignore the program has flat-lined of late and carries a bad rep of being unable to keep the best in-state talent home.
The Huskers, meanwhile, have a home arena and attendance that most high-majors would envy. Money and support are major factors when weighing a program’s value. But we can’t ignore Nebraska’s jarring lack of success. Having joined the Big Ten in 2011-12, playing in the league that on average produces the most NCAA Tournament bids, the Huskers have danced once — once! — in 12 years of membership.
One program here, Temple, ranks No. 6 all-time in Division I wins, behind only Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina, Duke and UCLA. Fact is, though, Temple’s historical numbers are exactly that — history. Since leaving the Atlantic 10 in 2013, the Owls have careened from relevance, failing to post a top-50 KenPom finish in more than a decade and feeling both rudderless and identity-less.
As for the rest, no one wants to kick anyone when they’re down, but reality is reality. DePaul’s average season finish in the KenPom era (1997-present) is 135th. Oregon State and Washington State both lack success over the past quarter century and have been cast off as Pac-12 expats. South Carolina’s history can mount a case to move up a rung, but it’s a program devoid of consistency and identity. Georgia has made one NCAA Tournament since 2012.
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Ole Miss may have the best chance of this group to transform its status soon. Whether you agree with the hiring of Chris Beard or not, he’s going to win games and get the Rebels going. The only question is if he stays there long enough to make a lasting change in the trajectory of a program that hasn’t finished a season ranked in the AP poll since 2000-01.
Countless programs will feel jaded by not being mentioned at all here. Multiple Mountain West schools, from Colorado State to New Mexico to Nevada, can make the case they’re more relevant than some included. So too can Liberty, Drake, Belmont, Murray State. ACC-bound SMU presents all kinds of questions. Heck, Princeton is more viable than some of the schools here. Florida Atlantic, one of the hottest programs in college hoops, isn’t included here because it doesn’t fit the qualifications and is, in truth, one coaching change away from vanishing. Disagree? Go talk to Loyola Chicago and George Mason.
The realities of the caste system in college basketball are neither fair, nor exact, but they are clear. — Brendan Quinn
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; Photos of UCLA’s Dylan Andrews, Duke’s Jaylen Blakes and Indiana’s Kel’el Ware: David Dennis, Grant Halverson and Porter Binks / Getty Images)