Best team not to win it all?

[OttoMets]

I think that JB is a much better coach now than he was then. I'm guessing that if today's JB could coach that team the W/L record would be much better.

Maybe. There are certainly a lot of things that he's learned and improved upon during the course of his career.

But (I say this not to ruffle feathers, but because it's pretty accurate) almost every loss suffered by the 1988 and 1989 teams was due to awful free-throw shooting. And that's not something that Boeheim's improved in 20 years.

 

[moqui]

I have the 88-89 first. Was torn on the 89-90 team. I did not include them because I felt like they were fatally flawed no matter what they accomplished, also didn't want my list to be entirely composed of Derrick Coleman teams. While I recall the 79-80 season very vaguely, it was too early for me to really have a sense for what the team was about.

sorry, I'm an idiot

 

[cuseattle]

The 90-91 Vegas squad

I saw the '89-90 UNLV team cruise through the regional finals at the Kingdome-they were amazing. Can't believe they didn't repeat.

 

[BuffOrange]

There really can be no debate on this topic. The '87 team was a DC FT or a long Keith Smart J from the title. You simply can't be any better than that wo actually winning the title. That team's success and closeness to a title was a factoid !!!

After '87, it is hard to not like the AO team if no injury or this year's team w Fab, or the '89 team wo injury in any order(though personally I would go with the AO team). Nonetheless, it is all arguable and speculative about what might have been with those squads. The '87 teams seperates itself by being sooooooo close & actually having gotten to the penultimate play.

Isn't being speculative kinda the point of these discussions? I don't see how looking strictly at tournament results is any better of a measuring stick than some collective opinions. What if Providence didn't beat G'town in '87 (a team that beat us 3 times that year) - would the '96 team then be better than them?

 

[Knicks411]

Four of five starters shot better than 50% from the field for the year. The fifth (Matt Roe, the shooting guard) only managed to hit 49.2% of his field goal attempts.

Loaded. They didn't have the same heart that the 2010 and 2012 teams had, but it was a tremendous team.

That is pretty insane. 2010 was much like that also; every guy who played made more than 50% of their 2's and had an EFG over 50%. Just looked up the 1990 team; it's crazy how little the 3 point shot was a part of the game even back then. We had 2 guys make more than 10 that year.