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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1365077, member: 289"] This is an update of a post I made in February of last year: We’re trying to win the ACC regular season championship. Then we’ll try to win the ACC Tournament. We’re also trying to win the national championship but that can only be won by winning the NCAA tournament. It made me wonder what things might have been like over the years if we had a regular season national championship and a post season national championship as we do with the conferences. Football used to base its national championship on the last regular season poll, (that ended in 1968: the first poll was in 1936). What if we looked at the team voted #1 in the last regular season writer’s or coach’s polls as the regular season national champion? You could argue that attaining and maintain a #1 ranking to the end of a 31 game regular season is as much of an accomplishment as winning a single elimination tournament over 6 games. You might argue that the latter is harder but it also has more freakish results. If you are voted #1 at the end of the regular season, that’s not a freak thing. Maybe we should recognize both. In basketball, the writer’s poll began in the 1948-49 season, (I’ll call that 1949 for short), the coach’s in 1950-51, (which I’ll call 1951). Where there is a conference tournament, I’ll use the last poll before the conference tournament. Here are your “regular season national champions” (source: The ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia, the ESPN website and SportsReference.com: College Basketball): 1949 Kentucky 1950 Bradley 1951 Kentucky and Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State) 1952 Kentucky 1953 Indiana 1954 Kentucky and Indiana 1955 San Francisco 1956 San Francisco 1957 North Carolina 1958 West Virginia 1959 Kansas State 1960 Cincinnati and California 1961 Ohio State 1962 Ohio State 1963 Cincinnati 1964 UCLA 1965 Michigan 1966 Kentucky 1967 UCLA 1968 Houston 1969 UCLA 1970 Kentucky 1971 UCLA 1972 UCLA 1973 UCLA 1974 NC State 1975 Indiana 1976 Indiana 1977 Michigan 1978 Kentucky 1979 Indiana State 1980 DePaul 1981 DePaul 1982 North Carolina 1983 Houston 1984 North Carolina 1985 Georgetown 1986 Duke 1987 UNLV 1988 Temple 1989 Arizona 1990 Oklahoma 1991 UNLV 1992 Duke 1993 North Carolina 1994 Arkansas 1995 UCLA 1996 Kentucky 1997 Kansas 1998 Duke 1999 Duke 2000 Cincinnati 2001 Stanford 2002 Kansas 2003 Arizona 2004 St. Joseph’s 2005 Illinois 2006 Connecticut 2007 Ohio State 2008 North Carolina 2009 Louisville 2010 Kansas 2011 Ohio State 2012 Kentucky 2013 Gonzaga 2014 Florida 2015 Kentucky The NCAA tournament champions would also be national champions, just as the ACC tournament champions will also be ACC champions. Syracuse ([I]in 2014[/I]) would thus ([I]was[/I]) going for four championships this season: the ACC regular season and national regular season, (both of which could be won when we play our last regular season game vs. Florida State), the ACC tournament championship, which we would compete for the next week and NCAA title, which we could compete for over the final three weeks. They would all count and they would all matter. If we finish say, 36-1, (losing our first game in the Sweet 16), we would already have won a national championship. Someone else would then win the post season championship. A composite list of national championships won, (“R” is a regular season title, “P” is the post season title): Arizona R1989, P1997, R2003 (3) Arkansas R1994, P1994 (2) Bradley R1950 (1) California P1959, R1960 (2) CCNY P1950 (1) Cincinnati R1960, P1961, P1962, R1963, R2000 (5) Connecticut P1999, P2004, R2006, P2011 (4) DePaul R1980, R1981 (1) Duke R1986, P1991, R1992, P1992, R1998, R1999, P2001, P2010 (8) Florida P2006, P2007 R2014 (3) Georgetown P1984, R1985 (2) Gonzaga R2013 (1) Holy Cross P1947 (1) Houston R1968, R1983 (2) Illinois R2005 (1) Indiana P1940, P1953, R1953, R1954, R1975, R1976, P1976, P1981, P1987 (9) Indiana State R1979 (1) Kansas P1952, P1988, R1997, R2002, P2008, R2010 (6) Kansas State R1959 (1) Kentucky P1948, R1949, P1949, R1951, P1951, R1952, R1954, P1958, R1966, R1970, R1978, P1978, R1996, P1996, P1998, R2012, P2012, R2015 (18) LaSalle P1954 (1) Louisville P1980, P1986, R2009, P2013 (4) Loyola (Chicago) P1963 (1) Marquette P1977 (1) Maryland P2002 (1) Michigan R1965, R1977, P1989 (3) Michigan State P1979, P2000 (2) North Carolina R1957, P1957, R1982, P1982, R1984, R1993, P1993, P2005, R2008, P2009 (10) North Carolina State R 1974, P1974, P1983 (3) Ohio State P1960, R1961, R1962, R2007, R2011 (5) Oklahoma R1990 (1) Oklahoma State (A&M) P1945, P1946, R1951 (3) Oregon P1939 (1) San Francisco R1955, P1955, R1956, P1956 (4) St. Joseph’s R2004 (1) Stanford P1942, R2001 (2) Syracuse P2003 (1) Temple R1988 (1) Texas-El-Paso, (Texas Western) P1966 (1) UCLA R1964, P1964, P1965, R1967, P1967, P1968, R1969, P1969, P1970, R1971, P1971, R1972, P1972, R1973, P1973, P1975, R1995, P1995 (18) UNLV R1987, P1990, R1991 (3) Utah P1944 (1) Villanova P1985 (1) West Virginia R1958 (1) Wisconsin P1941 (1) Wyoming P1943 (1) [/QUOTE]

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