It’s become irrelevant to us with the loss to South Carolina but I decided to see who the last undefeated team was each year as far back as I could figure it and how they wound up. My tools were the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia, (the ECBE), which came out in 2009 and their website for subsequent seasons.
What the ECBE has is the weekly rankings from the writers and coaches and the records of the teams at the time those polls came out. I don’t know the actual date they finally lost and it’s possible that a team might have won another game before the lost and the next poll came out. (If their record went from 15-0 to 16-1, I don’t know if the win or the loss came first). So what I am doing is scanning the weekly rankings for the last ranked team that was still undefeated at the time of that poll and recording that. If more than one team was undefeated and then lost in the next week, I recorded the team that had won the most games at that time. If a team was undefeated in a previous poll with more wins than an undefeated team in a following poll, I recorded just the team from the following poll. The number of wins is a tie-breaker between teams that lost in the same week, not something that would elevate a team that had lost in a previous week but happened to have played more games to that point. If two teams with the same number of wins lost for the first time in the same week, that is a “true tie” and both teams are recorded. I applied the same rules to the year covered by their website.
The first season covered by the writer’s pol was 1948-49. (The coach’s poll began two years later.) What appears below is the year, (represented by the second year of the season: 1948-49 is “1949”), the last team to be undefeated under the rules cites above, their record when they were last undefeated, their final record and how far they went in the NCAA tournament. I identified that as “the round 64”, “the round of 32”, “The Sweet 16”, “The Elite 8”, the “Semi-Finals”, the Finals and “National Champion”, which I have abbreviated as 64 32, 16, 8, 4, 2, NC. I didn’t use the term “first round” because that changes with the size of the tournament. If you are in a 24 team tournament and lost in the “first round”, you lost in the “round of 32”.
1949 Hamline 15-0 (31-3) Won NAIB championship
(yes, Hamline with Vern Mikkelsen, who became an NBA star with the Lakers and two other NBA players in Hal Haskins and Jim Fritsche, were ranked #5 with a 15-0 record on February 5th. They fell out of the rankings after their 3 losses but went on to win the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball championship. The NAIB became the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, the NAIA, in 1952.)
1950 Holy Cross 24-0 (27-4) 8
1951 Columbia 21-0 (23-1) 16
1952 Duquesne 17-0 (23-4) 8
1953 Seton Hall 26-0 (31-2) Won NIT
1954 Kentucky 25-0 (25-0) On probation
1955 Auburn 6-0 (11-9) Not invited
1956 San Francisco 29-0 (29-0) NC
1957 North Carolina 32-0 (32-0) NC
1958 West Virginia 14-0 (26-2) 32
1959 Auburn 18-0 (20-2) Didn’t make NCAA, (conference champs only)
1960 Cincinnati 12-0 (28-2) 4
1961 Ohio State 23-0 (27-1) 2 (lost in OT)
1962 Ohio State 21-0 (26-3) 2
1963 Cincinnati 19-0 (26-2) 2 (lost in OT)
1964 UCLA 30-0 (30-0) NC
1965 Providence 19-0 (24-2) 8
1966 Kentucky 23-0 (27-2) 2
1967 UCLA 30-0 (30-0) NC
1968 Houston 31-0 (31-2) 4
1969 UCLA 24-0 (29-1) NC
1970 UCLA 20-0 (28-2) NC
1971 Pennsylvania 28-0 (28-1) 8
1972 UCLA 30-0 (30-0) NC
1973 UCLA 30-0 (30-0) NC
1974 Notre Dame 10-0 (26-3) 16
1975 Indiana 31-0 (31-1) 8
1976 Indiana 32-0 (32-0) NC
1977 San Francisco 29-0 (29-2) 32
1978 Kentucky 14-0 (30-2) NC
1979 Indiana State 33-0 (33-1) 2
1980 DePaul 25-0 (26-2) 32
1981 Oregon State 25-0 (26-2) 32
1982 Missouri 18-0 (27-4) 16
1983 UNLV 24-0 (28-3) 16
1984 DePaul 17-0 (27-3) 32
1985 Georgetown 17-0 (35-3) 2
1986 North Carolina 21-0 (28-6) 16
1987 Iowa 16-0 (30-5) 8
1988 Brigham Young 15-0 (26-6) 32
1989 Illinois 17-0 (31-5) 4
1990 Kansas 18-0 (30-5) 32
1991 UNLV 34-0 (34-1) 4
1992 Duke 17-0 (34-2) NC
1993 Virginia 11-0 (21-10) 16
1994 UCLA 13-0 (21-7) 64
1995 Connecticut 14-0 (28-5) 32
1996 Massachusetts 25-0 (35-2) 4
1997 Kansas 22-0 (34-2) 16
1998 Utah 17-0 (30-4) 2
1999 Connecticut 19-0 (34-2) NC
(…and we were the ones who beat them!)
2000 Syracuse 19-0 (26-6) 16
2001 Stanford 19-0 (31-3) 8
2002 Duke 11-0 (31-4) 16
2003 Duke 11-0 (26-7) 16
2004 St. Joseph’s 27-0 (30-2) 8
2005 Illinois 28-0 (37-2) NC
2006 Florida 16-0 (33-6) NC and Duke 16-0 (32-4) 16
2007 UCLA 13-0 (30-6) 4
2008 Memphis 25-0 (38-2) 2
2009 Wake Forest 16-0 (24-7) 64
2010 Kentucky 19-0 (35-3) 8
2011 Ohio State 24-0 (34-3) 16
2012 Syracuse 19-0 (34-3) 8
2013 Michigan 15-0 (31-8) 2
2014 Wichita State 35-0 (35-1) 32
(We were 25-0 and #1 ranked but we were not the team that was undefeated the longest)
2015 Kentucky 38-0 (38-1) 4
2016 So. Methodist 18-0 (25-5) Probation
It’s interesting that the seven undefeated National Champions were all within a 21 year period from 1956-76. Eleven other teams have entered the NCAA tournament undefeated and lost: Columbia ’51, Ohio State ’61, Houston and St. Bonaventure ’68, Pennsylvania and Marquette ’71, Indiana ’75, Indiana State ’79, UNLV -91, Wichita State ’14 and Kentucky ’15.
The last team to lose has won the national championship 14 times in in 67 seasons. One won the NIT and one won the NAIB. Two teams were on probation and two didn't win their conference when you had to do that to get in the NCAA tourney. They've lost in the NCAA finals 9 times, in the Semis 7 times, in the Elite 8 9 times, in the Sweet 16 11 times, in the round of 9 times and the round of 64 twice, which means that a great start guarantees you nothing except maybe making the big dance.
Your intentions were good!
