SWC75
Bored Historian
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No, this isn't a tale of my college days.
We have a national best streak of 46 consecutive winning seasons on the line this year. To me, this is our proudest basketball possession. Yes, we have a national championship but the schools we consider ourselves to be otherwise comparable or even superior to in basketball have more, in some cases a lot more. But in the last 46 years, every other school has hit a rut where they couldn't get to or above .5000 and have been looking up at us when the season was over. it's also an achievement that unites generations of players, coaches and fans and is a joint achievement of all of them. The all-time record for consecutive winning seasons is by UCLA with 54 in a row from the 1948-49 season to 2001-2002. I've been hoping that we could top the mighty Bruins and have the greatest streak of all time. This is a precious thing but it was in jeopardy last year when we were 10-7 and 0-4 in the conference. This year with the team at 8-6 and having just been blown out by what was thought to be the worst team in the conference, the outlook is extremely bleak. I decided to update my post on this subject from last year and assess what we need to do, (numerically) to kept the streak going this year.
First, the update of last year's post:
(I’ve now updated this to include the 2015-16 season. I didn’t add any new streaks. If somebody had 19 winning seasons in a row and got their 20th last year, they aren’t on the list.)
Syracuse’s basketball program has had 45 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country. Syracuse’s streak runs from 1970-1971 through 2015-2016 (for the purposes of this study I shall refer to seasons by the second year, in which most of the games are played and the championship is decided, so let’s call that 1971-2016). The all-time record is 54 in a row by UCLA from 1949-2002.
If we keep having winning seasons, we would top the Bruins in 2024-25. Normally that we seem relatively simply, especially with all the homes games we have in the pre-conference season, the “guarantee” games against schools that come here to play for the money they can make and don’t expect a return game and the continuing excellence of our teams. But the NCAA punishments of reduced scholarships and vacated wins threaten to terminate that streak. Hopefully we can get at least enough of the vacated wins back to keep it alive.
I decided to do some research on consecutive winning seasons. I thought I could just google that and get a list but I was unable to win one. It may not be an official record, (in which case the NCAA’s action doesn’t actually threaten it). I scanned the yearly records of schools as listed in ESPN’s College Basketball Encyclopedia and also Basketball reference.com to try and come up with a list of every streak of at least 20 consecutive winning seasons to see just how good our streak looks by comparison. I’m limiting this to years where teams were considered major college. If their major college streak was part of a longer streak dating from when they were a major college, I’ll note that in the “Notes” section at the end. I’m also going to list consecutive seasons. If a school did not field a team for at least one seasons, that ends the streak, even if their program resumed and more winning seasons afterward, (also see the “notes” section for some examples). ‘+’ means the streak is still active.
54 UCLA 1949-2002
46 Syracuse 1971-2016+ (see notes)
42 Louisville 1949-1990 (see notes)
37 North Carolina 1965-2001
33 Indiana 1971-2003
33 Kansas 1984-2016+
32 Arizona 1985-2016+
31 St. John’s 1923-1953
30 Fordham 1903-1932
30 Notre Dame 1926-1955
30 St. John’s 1964-1993 (quite a history)
29 Connecticut 1988-2016+
29 Murray State 1988-2016+
28 Oklahoma 1982-2009
27 California 1908-1934
27 Rhode Island 1927-1953
26 North Dakota State 1901-1926
26 Toledo 1960-1985
25 Cincinnati 1954-1978
26 Kentucky 1991-2016+
25 Kentucky 1928-1952 (see notes)
25 Montana 1974-1998
24 Dartmouth 1921-1944
24 DePaul 1972-1995
24 Georgetown 1975-1998
23 Dayton 1949-1971
23 Maryland 1994-2016+
23 Oklahoma State 1989-2011
23 Princeton 1957-1979
23 Purdue 1920-1942
23 Temple 1984-2006
23 Utah State 1994-2016+
23 Western Michigan 1915-1937
22 Marquette 1966-1987
22 Penn State 1904-1925
21 Duke 1951-1972
21 UNLV 1974-1994
20 Duke 1996-2015
20 Houston 1960-1979
20 Illinois 1979-1998
20 Navy 1909-1928
20 North Carolina State 1972-1991
20 West Virginia 1945-1964
NOTES:
Alcon State had 21 consecutive winning seasons from 1966-1986 but didn’t become a major college team until 1978.
College of Charleston had 28 consecutive winning seasons from 1980-2007 but didn’t’ become a major college until 1992.
Jackson State had 29 consecutive winning seasons from 1950-1978 but only became a major college in the final year of the streak.
Kentucky had 25 consecutive winning seasons from 1928-1952, winning the NIT in 1947, the NCAAS championship in 1948, 1949 and 1951. They got caught up in the point-shaving scandals and the investigation into that revealed many recruiting improprieties. The NCAA and the SEC, (which was sick of losing to them) game them the first “death penalty” for the 1952-53 season. They went 25-0 the next season and beat eventual NCAA champions LaSalle by 73-60. But just before the NCAA tournament, the NCAA insisted that Kentucky could not use three players who had actually graduated during the “death penalty” year and Kentucky decided not to participate. They went on to another 13 winning seasons in a row, including another NCAA title in 1966 and that famous loss to Texas Western in t final year of the streak. That one “death penalty” year cost them a 39 year streak.
Louisville had a streak of 46 consecutive winning seasons from 1945-1990 Basketball Referecne.com says it lists only major college seasons and lists those years in Louisville’s record, (they have the Cardinals a major college team since 1912). ESPN’s College Basketball Encyclopedia lists their records from 1911 on as well. It does have information for years when teams were regarded as small colleges, (which is where I got much of the information about small college periods in this section). But they usually note when a team became a major college team. They say nothing about Louisville being a small college team at any time. Yet the Cardinals won the 1948 NAIB championship. That’s the “National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball”, which in 1952 became the NAIA. Wikipedia: “The goal of the tournament was to establish a forum for small colleges and universities to determine a national basketball champion.”. So it appears Louisville was considered a small college in 1948.They joined the Ohio Valley Conference, which was considered major college for basketball, the next year and appeared in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 1951. I’m going to count those first four season of their streak (1945-48) as a period when they were a small college and credit them with a major college streak of 42 in a row from 1949-1990.
Norfolk State had a dandy streak of 35 winning seasons in a row as a small college team from 1963-1997, then turned major college and had losing seasons, the first of 11 in 13 years. Why do these schools ruin a good thing?
North Carolina A&T had 21 consecutive winning seasons from 1956-1076 but didn’t become a major college team until 1974.
The NCAA issued sanctions against Syracuse University on March 6, 2015 that included an order that “the institution will vacate all wins from the academic years 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07, 2010-11 and 2011-12 in men's basketball”. This would end Syracuse’s steak with the 2003 season and reduce it to a 33 year streak. This University has announced an appeal of this decision so it’s possible the penalty might be reduced and some of those victories reinstated. Beyond that the consecutive winning season streak is not an official NCAA record, (it doesn’t appear in the NCAA Basketball Record Book). If the record is itself unofficial, Syracuse could still reasonably claim that their now “unofficial” wins still count toward it.
Now for the numerical parameters of what we've got to do this year. The first goal would be to get to 17 wins in the regular season. Since we are scheduled to play 31 games, 17 wins gives us a 17-14 record. If we go one and done in both the conference and whatever post-season tournament we are in, we would still be 17-16 and the streak would continue. We'd have to go 9-8 the rest of the way to clinch the continuation of the streak. (Based on yesterday's result that would probably involve 9 upsets in 17 games).
Then I looked at the minimum record we could have and still theoretically have a chance to continue the streak based on post season results. If we had a bad record, we would have to play in the first round of the ACC tournament and would have to win 5 games to win it. That would put us in the NCAA tournament, even if we still had a losing record. I don't believe we would be in the NCAA "play-in games" if we'd won the ACC tournament, so we'd have the chance to win 6 more games. Thus we could (very) theoretically finish regular season ten games under .500 and still wind up with a winning record. We can't finishing 10 game sunder .500 because it's a 31 game schedule: we could go 10-21 or 11-20. If we can get to 11-20, therefore we still have a numerical chance to continue the streak if we can go 3-14 the rest of the way. That's possible. Of course an 11-0 post season is almost certainly impossible. My point is that when he sustain our 21st regular season loss, that is the point at which we are completely done.
There are no less than four other post season tournaments: the National Invitation Tournament, (NIT), the College Basketball Invitational, (CBI), the College Insider Tournament (CIT) and the Vegas 16. The NIT, of course, actually predates the NCAA and at one time was considered the more important tournament, a status it has long since lost, (it's now owned by the NCAA). The others are attempts to create the equivalent of a bowl system for college basketball. We would only be in these tournaments if we did not win the ACC tournament, so the bets record we could have had there was 4-1. The NIT and CIT have 32 teams and have to be won by winning 5 games. The CBI has 16 teams and could get a team 4 extra wins. The Vegas 16, despite the name, has only 8 teams and could get a team 3 extra wins.
We could this got to the finals of the ACC tournament and then to the Vegas 16 and get 6 more wins. We could go 13-18 in the regular season and wind up 19-18. That would mean going 5-12 the rest of the regular season. We could also continue the streak by winning the CBI but would also have to be 13-18. A 12-19 teams could got 4-1 in the ACC and then win the NIT or the CIT with 5 wins and finish 21-20. We'd have to go at least 4-13 the rest of the way for that to have a chance.
The problem is, teams with losing records are unlikely to get into these tournaments. The NIT doesn't have that as a requirement: "A common misconception is only teams with records of .500 or better can receive an invitation. However, the tournament charter provides for no such requirement. It only asks that the participants come from a pool of "the 54 best teams" available." But they have never invited a team that didn't have at least a .500 record. For the CIT, "Participating teams must finish the regular season with a .500 winning percentage or better to qualify". I checked and all of last season's NIT teams had above .500 records in the regular season. For the CBI: "Teams can be under .500 and how teams are playing at the end of the year is a factor in selection." But last year's CBI didn't have any teams that weren't above .500 and also above .500 in the regular season. For the Vegas 16: "there is interest from many teams that have won 20 games, but that 20 wins aren’t required. He said the Vegas 16 probably would not pursue teams with losing records, though."
So we'd probably have to get to .500 to go to these tournaments. We'd need to get to 16-15 to be .5000 in the regular season. That's 8-9 from this point on. To get to .500 by the end of the ACC tournament, (assuming we make it to the championship game), we'd have to be 14-17 at the end of the regular season which would mean going 6-11 the rest of the way.
Of course we could break precedent and go to these tournaments with less than a .5000 record because we have the Carrier Dome and the tournaments might want to hold a game or two there for the attendance. That would not work with the Vegas 16 because that entire tournament takes place in Las Vegas.
Then there is the question of whether we would want to 'lower ourselves' by attending these tournaments nobody cares about. And would that be a legitimate way to extend the streak? I suggest it's no different than going to a minor bowl in football, which apparently we would really like to do. If we had a similar streak in football and extended it by having a 6-6 team win a bowl game, I'm sure we would count that.
Hopefully Jim Boeheim and the team will get this thing turned around and make this a non-issue by getting us to 17 wins. But if they don't we still have a shot until we lose our 21st game. That's the time for the final eulogies.
We have a national best streak of 46 consecutive winning seasons on the line this year. To me, this is our proudest basketball possession. Yes, we have a national championship but the schools we consider ourselves to be otherwise comparable or even superior to in basketball have more, in some cases a lot more. But in the last 46 years, every other school has hit a rut where they couldn't get to or above .5000 and have been looking up at us when the season was over. it's also an achievement that unites generations of players, coaches and fans and is a joint achievement of all of them. The all-time record for consecutive winning seasons is by UCLA with 54 in a row from the 1948-49 season to 2001-2002. I've been hoping that we could top the mighty Bruins and have the greatest streak of all time. This is a precious thing but it was in jeopardy last year when we were 10-7 and 0-4 in the conference. This year with the team at 8-6 and having just been blown out by what was thought to be the worst team in the conference, the outlook is extremely bleak. I decided to update my post on this subject from last year and assess what we need to do, (numerically) to kept the streak going this year.
First, the update of last year's post:
(I’ve now updated this to include the 2015-16 season. I didn’t add any new streaks. If somebody had 19 winning seasons in a row and got their 20th last year, they aren’t on the list.)
Syracuse’s basketball program has had 45 consecutive winning seasons, the longest streak in the country. Syracuse’s streak runs from 1970-1971 through 2015-2016 (for the purposes of this study I shall refer to seasons by the second year, in which most of the games are played and the championship is decided, so let’s call that 1971-2016). The all-time record is 54 in a row by UCLA from 1949-2002.
If we keep having winning seasons, we would top the Bruins in 2024-25. Normally that we seem relatively simply, especially with all the homes games we have in the pre-conference season, the “guarantee” games against schools that come here to play for the money they can make and don’t expect a return game and the continuing excellence of our teams. But the NCAA punishments of reduced scholarships and vacated wins threaten to terminate that streak. Hopefully we can get at least enough of the vacated wins back to keep it alive.
I decided to do some research on consecutive winning seasons. I thought I could just google that and get a list but I was unable to win one. It may not be an official record, (in which case the NCAA’s action doesn’t actually threaten it). I scanned the yearly records of schools as listed in ESPN’s College Basketball Encyclopedia and also Basketball reference.com to try and come up with a list of every streak of at least 20 consecutive winning seasons to see just how good our streak looks by comparison. I’m limiting this to years where teams were considered major college. If their major college streak was part of a longer streak dating from when they were a major college, I’ll note that in the “Notes” section at the end. I’m also going to list consecutive seasons. If a school did not field a team for at least one seasons, that ends the streak, even if their program resumed and more winning seasons afterward, (also see the “notes” section for some examples). ‘+’ means the streak is still active.
54 UCLA 1949-2002
46 Syracuse 1971-2016+ (see notes)
42 Louisville 1949-1990 (see notes)
37 North Carolina 1965-2001
33 Indiana 1971-2003
33 Kansas 1984-2016+
32 Arizona 1985-2016+
31 St. John’s 1923-1953
30 Fordham 1903-1932
30 Notre Dame 1926-1955
30 St. John’s 1964-1993 (quite a history)
29 Connecticut 1988-2016+
29 Murray State 1988-2016+
28 Oklahoma 1982-2009
27 California 1908-1934
27 Rhode Island 1927-1953
26 North Dakota State 1901-1926
26 Toledo 1960-1985
25 Cincinnati 1954-1978
26 Kentucky 1991-2016+
25 Kentucky 1928-1952 (see notes)
25 Montana 1974-1998
24 Dartmouth 1921-1944
24 DePaul 1972-1995
24 Georgetown 1975-1998
23 Dayton 1949-1971
23 Maryland 1994-2016+
23 Oklahoma State 1989-2011
23 Princeton 1957-1979
23 Purdue 1920-1942
23 Temple 1984-2006
23 Utah State 1994-2016+
23 Western Michigan 1915-1937
22 Marquette 1966-1987
22 Penn State 1904-1925
21 Duke 1951-1972
21 UNLV 1974-1994
20 Duke 1996-2015
20 Houston 1960-1979
20 Illinois 1979-1998
20 Navy 1909-1928
20 North Carolina State 1972-1991
20 West Virginia 1945-1964
NOTES:
Alcon State had 21 consecutive winning seasons from 1966-1986 but didn’t become a major college team until 1978.
College of Charleston had 28 consecutive winning seasons from 1980-2007 but didn’t’ become a major college until 1992.
Jackson State had 29 consecutive winning seasons from 1950-1978 but only became a major college in the final year of the streak.
Kentucky had 25 consecutive winning seasons from 1928-1952, winning the NIT in 1947, the NCAAS championship in 1948, 1949 and 1951. They got caught up in the point-shaving scandals and the investigation into that revealed many recruiting improprieties. The NCAA and the SEC, (which was sick of losing to them) game them the first “death penalty” for the 1952-53 season. They went 25-0 the next season and beat eventual NCAA champions LaSalle by 73-60. But just before the NCAA tournament, the NCAA insisted that Kentucky could not use three players who had actually graduated during the “death penalty” year and Kentucky decided not to participate. They went on to another 13 winning seasons in a row, including another NCAA title in 1966 and that famous loss to Texas Western in t final year of the streak. That one “death penalty” year cost them a 39 year streak.
Louisville had a streak of 46 consecutive winning seasons from 1945-1990 Basketball Referecne.com says it lists only major college seasons and lists those years in Louisville’s record, (they have the Cardinals a major college team since 1912). ESPN’s College Basketball Encyclopedia lists their records from 1911 on as well. It does have information for years when teams were regarded as small colleges, (which is where I got much of the information about small college periods in this section). But they usually note when a team became a major college team. They say nothing about Louisville being a small college team at any time. Yet the Cardinals won the 1948 NAIB championship. That’s the “National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball”, which in 1952 became the NAIA. Wikipedia: “The goal of the tournament was to establish a forum for small colleges and universities to determine a national basketball champion.”. So it appears Louisville was considered a small college in 1948.They joined the Ohio Valley Conference, which was considered major college for basketball, the next year and appeared in the NCAA tournament for the first time in 1951. I’m going to count those first four season of their streak (1945-48) as a period when they were a small college and credit them with a major college streak of 42 in a row from 1949-1990.
Norfolk State had a dandy streak of 35 winning seasons in a row as a small college team from 1963-1997, then turned major college and had losing seasons, the first of 11 in 13 years. Why do these schools ruin a good thing?
North Carolina A&T had 21 consecutive winning seasons from 1956-1076 but didn’t become a major college team until 1974.
The NCAA issued sanctions against Syracuse University on March 6, 2015 that included an order that “the institution will vacate all wins from the academic years 2004-05, 2005-06, 2006-07, 2010-11 and 2011-12 in men's basketball”. This would end Syracuse’s steak with the 2003 season and reduce it to a 33 year streak. This University has announced an appeal of this decision so it’s possible the penalty might be reduced and some of those victories reinstated. Beyond that the consecutive winning season streak is not an official NCAA record, (it doesn’t appear in the NCAA Basketball Record Book). If the record is itself unofficial, Syracuse could still reasonably claim that their now “unofficial” wins still count toward it.
Now for the numerical parameters of what we've got to do this year. The first goal would be to get to 17 wins in the regular season. Since we are scheduled to play 31 games, 17 wins gives us a 17-14 record. If we go one and done in both the conference and whatever post-season tournament we are in, we would still be 17-16 and the streak would continue. We'd have to go 9-8 the rest of the way to clinch the continuation of the streak. (Based on yesterday's result that would probably involve 9 upsets in 17 games).
Then I looked at the minimum record we could have and still theoretically have a chance to continue the streak based on post season results. If we had a bad record, we would have to play in the first round of the ACC tournament and would have to win 5 games to win it. That would put us in the NCAA tournament, even if we still had a losing record. I don't believe we would be in the NCAA "play-in games" if we'd won the ACC tournament, so we'd have the chance to win 6 more games. Thus we could (very) theoretically finish regular season ten games under .500 and still wind up with a winning record. We can't finishing 10 game sunder .500 because it's a 31 game schedule: we could go 10-21 or 11-20. If we can get to 11-20, therefore we still have a numerical chance to continue the streak if we can go 3-14 the rest of the way. That's possible. Of course an 11-0 post season is almost certainly impossible. My point is that when he sustain our 21st regular season loss, that is the point at which we are completely done.
There are no less than four other post season tournaments: the National Invitation Tournament, (NIT), the College Basketball Invitational, (CBI), the College Insider Tournament (CIT) and the Vegas 16. The NIT, of course, actually predates the NCAA and at one time was considered the more important tournament, a status it has long since lost, (it's now owned by the NCAA). The others are attempts to create the equivalent of a bowl system for college basketball. We would only be in these tournaments if we did not win the ACC tournament, so the bets record we could have had there was 4-1. The NIT and CIT have 32 teams and have to be won by winning 5 games. The CBI has 16 teams and could get a team 4 extra wins. The Vegas 16, despite the name, has only 8 teams and could get a team 3 extra wins.
We could this got to the finals of the ACC tournament and then to the Vegas 16 and get 6 more wins. We could go 13-18 in the regular season and wind up 19-18. That would mean going 5-12 the rest of the regular season. We could also continue the streak by winning the CBI but would also have to be 13-18. A 12-19 teams could got 4-1 in the ACC and then win the NIT or the CIT with 5 wins and finish 21-20. We'd have to go at least 4-13 the rest of the way for that to have a chance.
The problem is, teams with losing records are unlikely to get into these tournaments. The NIT doesn't have that as a requirement: "A common misconception is only teams with records of .500 or better can receive an invitation. However, the tournament charter provides for no such requirement. It only asks that the participants come from a pool of "the 54 best teams" available." But they have never invited a team that didn't have at least a .500 record. For the CIT, "Participating teams must finish the regular season with a .500 winning percentage or better to qualify". I checked and all of last season's NIT teams had above .500 records in the regular season. For the CBI: "Teams can be under .500 and how teams are playing at the end of the year is a factor in selection." But last year's CBI didn't have any teams that weren't above .500 and also above .500 in the regular season. For the Vegas 16: "there is interest from many teams that have won 20 games, but that 20 wins aren’t required. He said the Vegas 16 probably would not pursue teams with losing records, though."
So we'd probably have to get to .500 to go to these tournaments. We'd need to get to 16-15 to be .5000 in the regular season. That's 8-9 from this point on. To get to .500 by the end of the ACC tournament, (assuming we make it to the championship game), we'd have to be 14-17 at the end of the regular season which would mean going 6-11 the rest of the way.
Of course we could break precedent and go to these tournaments with less than a .5000 record because we have the Carrier Dome and the tournaments might want to hold a game or two there for the attendance. That would not work with the Vegas 16 because that entire tournament takes place in Las Vegas.
Then there is the question of whether we would want to 'lower ourselves' by attending these tournaments nobody cares about. And would that be a legitimate way to extend the streak? I suggest it's no different than going to a minor bowl in football, which apparently we would really like to do. If we had a similar streak in football and extended it by having a 6-6 team win a bowl game, I'm sure we would count that.
Hopefully Jim Boeheim and the team will get this thing turned around and make this a non-issue by getting us to 17 wins. But if they don't we still have a shot until we lose our 21st game. That's the time for the final eulogies.
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