The Greatest College Basketball Programs Ever: Ranking the top teams of all time | Page 2 | Syracusefan.com

The Greatest College Basketball Programs Ever: Ranking the top teams of all time

The criteria used are indeed messed up.
If you claim to be picking ‘the greatest college basketball programs ever’, you should include the entire history of each school, and not just arbitrarily ignore 4 decades of history,

That is one huge problem.

Then he decided to include points for regular season conference titles won too, which I think artificially elevates programs that have been in conferences for a long time, particularly bad conferences.

I also think attendance should be considered as well. Fan following is a key component that differentiates the good programs from the bad ones,

So yes, this is a largely worthless effort. Norlander failed. Again,
I like including regular season and conference tourney titles. I think teams should earn points for those. But it makes no sense to not give ANY points for making the Sweet 16 but points for an Elite Eight. Making the second weekend of the NCAA tourney should be considered because after the S16 there’s a lot of luck involved. Also, why is he giving points for an NIT title? Espn did this same thing like 10 years ago and did a much better job. I think we finished around 8 or 9 all time. I also like doing best teams in the modern 64 team+ NCAA tourney era.
 
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I think fan following it is a worthy metric when trying to rank college basketball programs in terms of their greatness. The great programs have great fanbases and great support.

I have lots of other problems with the methodology. An NIT Title should not have the same value as getting to the Elite Eight. Yes, the NIT used to be a more important tournament but winning one now is essentially meaningless in terms of establishing greatness. If you have to give credit for this, it should only be for the early years. 3 points for winning the NIT?

The points for getting to the Elite Eight are too low. If you get 2 points for getting an NCAA bid, how can you only get 1 more for getting 3 NCAA wins? You get 7 points for getting a fourth win, 0 points for getting a fifth win and then 10 points for getting a sixth win. No, this is poorly thought out.

I have no problem with giving a few more points for getting to the Final Four, the championship game and winning a title, but for me, there should be a consistent setup.

This is how I would do it:
Getting an NCAA bid gets 2 points. That part is okay.

You get a point for your first NCAA win in the tournament, 2 for a second, 3 for a third, 4 for a fourth (final four appearance), 5 for a fifth (championship game appearance) and 6 for a sixth.

So getting to the Final 32 gets you 1 point.
Getting to the Sweet Sixteen gets you 3 points.
Getting to the Final Four gets you 1+2+3+4 or 10 points.
Getting to the Championship Game gets you 1+2+3+4+5 or 15 points.
And winning it all gets you 21 points.

That would be a more equitable way of handling points for NCAA appearances.
Agreed, that’s a much better setup/sliding scale. Matt Norlander is terrible.
 
I like including regular season and conference tourney titles. I absolutely think teams should earn points for those. But it makes no sense to not give ANY points for making the Sweet 16 but points for an Elite Eight. Making the second weekend of the NCAA tourney should be considered because after the S16 there’s a lot of luck involved. Also, why is he giving points for an NIT title. Espn did this same thing like 10 years ago and did a much better job. I think we finished around 8 or 9 all time. I also like doing best teams in the modern 64 team+ NCAA tourney era.
But, not all conferences are created equal. And, it penalizes schools that were independent for a significant portion of the time period.
 
Uconn getting ~100 points for winning ~20 Yankee (and whatever conference they were in before that) regular season championships is absolutely an intelligent way to rank all-time basketball programs. Absolutely
 
Uconn getting ~100 points for winning ~20 Yankee (and whatever conference they were in before that) regular season championships is absolutely an intelligent way to rank all-time basketball programs. Absolutely
So we just throw that out and don’t reward teams for regular season success? That’s just as idiotic.
 
So we just throw that out and don’t reward teams for regular season success? That’s just as idiotic.
How about giving points for 20 win seasons?
 
I'm pretty sure that the NIT was all at large teams.
It was. That wasn't the discussion. Marquette was an at large selection in the NCAA tournament when they chose the NIT instead.
 
So we just throw that out and don’t reward teams for regular season success? That’s just as idiotic.
Conference regular season titles are in no way equal. Uconn winning the Yankee conference in 1957 shouldn't = UNC winning the ACC in 2019 in point distribution. Wouldn't be hard at all to factor in a power conference vs. non-power conference point system.
 
As much as I hate basically everything about Bob Knight, one area where we agree is how much he valued regular season conference titles. Conference tourneys and the NCAA tourney are such random crapshoots most of the time, but being able to sustain success over the course of 16-18 conference games is a big deal.

Going 17-1 in the Big East in 2012 was way more meaningful in my book than our fly by the seat of our pants 2016 run.

But we don't hang banners in the Dome for regular season titles because [reasons].
 
As much as I hate basically everything about Bob Knight, one area where we agree is how much he valued regular season conference titles. Conference tourneys and the NCAA tourney are such random crapshoots most of the time, but being able to sustain success over the course of 16-18 conference games is a big deal.

Going 17-1 in the Big East in 2012 was way more meaningful in my book than our fly by the seat of our pants 2016 run.

But we don't hang banners in the Dome for regular season titles because [reasons].
That makes sense. For the purposes of this list not all regular season titles are created equal, however.
 
That makes sense. For the purposes of this list not all regular season titles are created equal, however.

Agreed. I would figure out a way to make a mid-major title worth like 65% of a P5 title or something similar.
 
Agreed. I would figure out a way to make a mid-major title worth like 65% of a P5 title or something similar.

Yeah. Going 17-1 in the Big East in an era where about 3/4 of the teams in the league were good b-ball programs is something else.
 
Yeah if we don’t agree with the accessment let’s rationalize it till we do. I think it’s fair
 

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