ESPN ranked all 77 NCAA Tournament Champions with UCLA Basketball landing four in the Top 10.
You know them, you love them! They are the 11-time National Champion UCLA Basketball teams and they dominated the top of ESPN’s rankings of every NCAA Championship teams.
John Gasaway from the four-letter network took on the herculean task of ordering every single team to win the NCAA Tournament. As he puts it, “try ranking teams that by definition are all distinguished by excellence. These are all national champions, after all, so the ‘worst’ team here was better than any opponent it faced in its NCAA tournament.” Indeed.
The great thing about this list of champions is that UCLA Basketball, the program with the most NCAA Championships (11), is well represented at the top of the list. Four Bruin teams are ranked in the Top 10 and eight are ranked in the Top 20.
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Personally, I am glad that Gasaway assembled this list, because for me, as a UCLA Basketball fan, I would probably give them all an 11-way tie at #1. But realistically, every one of these Bruin teams can be objectively ranked.
But how does one chose from teams that had such greats as Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes, Sidney Wicks, Ed O’Bannon, Gail Goodrich and Walt Hazzard (just to name a few)? Well, Gasaway found a way.
Here are all 11 UCLA teams and their rankings:
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1. 1972 UCLA Bruins (30-0)
3. 1973 UCLA Bruins (30-0)
5. 1968 UCLA Bruins (29-1)
6. 1967 UCLA Bruins (30-0)
11. 1969 UCLA Bruins (29-1)
17. 1971 UCLA Bruins (29-1)
18. 1964 UCLA Bruins (30-0)
19. 1970 UCLA Bruins (28-2)
23. 1965 UCLA Bruins (28-2)
34. 1975 UCLA Bruins (28-3)
39. 1995 UCLA Bruins (32-1)
Looking at these teams, it is not easy to decide which one is more dominant than the other. Personally, I think an Alcindor-led team should be #1 in these rankings, but one cannot deny the sheer awesomeness of the 1972 Bruins that had the likes of Walton and Wilkes.
And then there is the choice between the John Wooden-coached Bruins and the Jim Harrick-coached Bruins (which is the last UCLA Championship team to be ranked). Though Harrick had a tough squad with O’Bannon and Tyus Edney, a Wooden championship team might beat the 1995 Bruins 9 out of 10 times.
UCLA dominates the top three.
— ESPN (@espn) April 1, 2016
Ranking all 77 NCAA tournament champions: https://t.co/74mBWXD9u0 pic.twitter.com/p11kPdAZxS
But as I wrote above, I would not have been able to create this list. I know the 1995 team better than the other ten, simply because I lived through it, but knowing my history of UCLA Basketball, I know that every Wooden team had their strengths and individual talents that gave them different advantages each year.
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Still, it is good to know that the other blue bloods Kentucky, North Carolina, Kansas and Duke are not even in the Top 5. And because of that, I will sleep well tonight. Go Bruins!