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To put this debate to rest once and for all I present to you a scientific approach to answer this question. The factors that will be looked at in determining this will be…
National Titles
This category will include both NCAA titles and Helms titles that were not won in the same year.
Final Fours
This is simply all the semi-final appearances in the NCAA tournament.
All-Time Wins
Total wins in the each individual program’s history.
Conference Titles
Total conference titles in all conferences that each program was ever a part of.
NCAA Tournament Appearances
This is the total appearances in the NCAA tournament regardless of result.
Consensus 1st Team All-Americans
This includes only those individuals that qualified as consensus 1st team All-Americans only.
Player of the Year Award Winners
To compute this, the Helms Player of the Year award was used until 1969, and then the Naismith Player of the Year was used until the present day.
Number of Winning Seasons
This includes all winning seasons by each individual program not including a .500 season.
Home Court Advantage
These ranking are up for debate. These rankings try to take into account the home court advantage throughout the history of the program.
Tradition
These rankings are the most controversial considering what defines “tradition.” What was considered was the whole of the program, its founding, its history, its players, its coaches, and other things of a historical significance.
These factors were ranked from 1-6 with
6 points awarded to the team ranked first
5 points awarded to the team ranked second
4 points awarded to the team ranked third
3 points awarded to the team ranked fourth
2 points awarded to the team ranked fifth
1 point awarded to the team ranked sixth
The only real question is who should be part of this discussion. Most reasonable college basketball fans would agree that Kansas, Kentucky, and North Carolina do belong in this discussion. However UCLA, Indiana, and Duke would argue that they too belong in this discussion. These “Super Six” schools will be used in determining who has the best program of all-time.
The Results
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#1 Kansas Jayhawks
Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of the game coached there and is even buried in Lawrence, Kansas.
Wilt Chamberlain, one of the best basketball players to ever play the game went to school there.
Allen Fieldhouse, where the Jayhawks play their home games, is widely considered to be the toughest place to play. They even have an 86% winning percentage since it opened in 1955!
Phog Allen, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, is widely known as the “father of basketball coaching.” Two of his players went on to become the driving forces behind the #2 and #3 ranked programs in this list. Dean Smith a Kansas alum went on to coach North Carolina and Adolph Rupp also a Kansas alum went on to coach Kentucky.
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#2 Kentucky Wildcats
All-time leader in program wins.
Adolph Rupp, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, won five national titles, and ranks fourth amongst all coaches nationally in wins.
They are consistently leading the nation in attendance every year.
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#3 North Carolina
Michael Jordan, one of the best basketball players ever to play the game went to school there.
Dean Smith, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, won two national titles, and ranks 2nd amongst all coaches nationally in wins.
They are tied for 1st with 18 Final Four appearances.
They are 3rd in all-time program wins.
They have a winning percentage of 76% all time.
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#4 UCLA
They have 11 national titles.
They are tied for 1st with 18 Final Four appearances.
John Wooden, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, won 10 national titles and ranks 20th amongst all coaches nationally in wins.
They won a ridiculous 7 straight national titles with the likes of Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton.
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#5 Duke
They have one of the toughest places to play in the game in Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Mike Krzyzewski, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, won four national titles, and ranks 3rd amongst all coaches nationally in wins.
They have nine Players of the Year.
They are fourth all time in program wins.
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#6 Indiana
Bobby Knight, the school’s leader in all-time wins as a coach, won three national titles, and ranks 1st amongst all coaches nationally in wins.
They have won five NCAA titles.
They have won 62.5% of all of the Final Fours that they have been in.
They have been to the NCAA tournament 35 times.
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Jason Spencer is college basketball writer for WavingTheWheat.com covering the Kansas Jayhawks and RushTheCourt.net covering the Big Sky Conference. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @SpenceSports
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