Top 10 college basketball programs

Led by head coach Tom Izzo, the Spartans have been one of the most dominant basketball teams of the past 20 years. Izzo has led them to an incredible six Final Four appearances during his tenure, which includes the school's second national championship run in Speaking of national titles, the Spartans are one of a handful of schools that have won multiple NCAA championships.

In addition to Izzo's trophy in , the school also won one in That team was coached by Jud Heathcote and was led by the school's most famous alumni—Magic Johnson. The greatest point guard in NBA history squared off against Indiana State and Larry Bird in that final, which is still considered to be one of the most incredible title games in the history of the sport.

Johnson will always be a key figure in the school's reputation and history, similar to Michael Jordan's long-lasting impact on the University of North Carolina.

Michigan State's most successful period is certainly its current era with coach Izzo. They have played on college basketball's final weekend in six of the previous fourteen seasons. He had an incredible three-year stretch from in which he took the Spartans to three consecutive Final Four appearances, with the national championship stuffed in the middle year of that run. What elevates Michigan State's standing on this list is what they accomplished before Tom Izzo came to the university.

They were certainly no world beater, but Heathcote did win a national championship in his tenure. Also, head coach Forddy Anderson led the Spartans to their first Final Four appearance and a spot in the Elite Eight during the late s. Therefore, the program has been successful across multiple eras, produced one of basketball's most transcendent players in its history and features one of the great college coaches in the sport's history.

All in all, Michigan State is certainly one of college basketball's elite programs and are more than deserving of their placement on this list. The Louisville Cardinals returned to college basketball's biggest stage last season as they advanced to the Final Four for the second time under head coach Rick Pitino.

Louisville has always had a proud basketball tradition and they are truly one of the premier programs in the country. Perhaps their best claim as an elite basketball school is their performance in the Final Four. The Cardinals have advanced to nine of them, which is spread out among three head coaches. None were more successful than Denny Crum. He took over the program in the season and immediately led U of L to the Final Four.

This became a common occurrence for Crum's Cardinals as he led them there six times in his first fifteen seasons as head coach. Louisville's best decade was the s. They won their only two NCAA national championships in and , which sandwich two Final Four appearances between those title runs. Before Crum, the school was not a dominant power but they were a major player on the college basketball landscape. Led by Peck Hickman, the Cardinals advanced to their first Final Four appearance in and have failed to look back ever since.

They are now led by coach Rick Pitino, who left the green pastures of the University of Kentucky and the NBA to follow in Denny Crums' footsteps as the head of Louisville's basketball team. He has taken them to two more Final Four appearances and enters next season as one of the favorites to win it all.

Beyond tournament success, Louisville boasts an impressive. Holding back the Cardinals are their lack of more all-time wins and their two all-time appearances in the national final. Regardless, though, the rest of their resume speaks for itself and they are certainly a proud program.

The Indiana Hoosiers are the third Big Ten team on this list and for good reason. They are simply one of the most blue-blood programs in the history of basketball.

There are many things going for the Hoosiers in terms of their all-time rank in the sport. First of all, they were led by Bob Knight, one of the greatest coaches to ever grace college sidelines. Knight took a good basketball program and turned them into legends as his teams ruled the s and s. In fact, there is an interesting parallel between Indiana and their cross-river rivals, the Louisville Cardinals.

After Knight won his first national title in , he closely matched the success of Denny Crum and contended with Louisville for the title of best team in the s. When the Cardinals won their title in , Indiana claimed the title in Then when Louisville returned to the top by winning it all in , Bob Knight led his Hoosiers to the national championship in Surrounding those national title runs were two other appearances in the Final Four and a literal perfect season in when Knight's Hoosiers finished the season Their undefeated record still stands to this day and is one of the most impressive feats in the sport's history.

He coached the school on and off from to and achieved great success during his tenure. McCracken led the and Hoosiers on national championship runs, which were also the school's first Final Four appearances.

With that being said, Indiana is being held back from a higher ranking because of a few reasons. First of all, the school has been to one Final Four since Knight's departure. They also missed the NCAA tournament multiple times during that time span and are just now resurrecting their national brand. In addition to this, Indiana lacks a single conference tournament championship in their history.

However, they are clearly one of the great schools in basketball history and have a proud and storied tradition. Indiana is the sixth-greatest college basketball program in NCAA history and have plenty to be proud of when wearing their school colors. The Kansas Jayhawks are one of the most difficult teams to rank on this entire list.

When viewing their overall resume, few schools can match their program in terms of history, tradition and longevity. The Wildcats own 10 wins over No. Arizona is 13th on this list and it's 13th in most victories ever 1, Like I said above, Olson changed it all.

He's the best coach in the history of the Pac and won games for Arizona, even holding a game home winning streak at one point. The '97 title-winning team is still the only one to beat three No. That group finished Sean Miller has run the show in Tucson since , and there's been off-the-court drama, but Arizona kept its relevancy for much of Miller's tenure by making three Elite Eights, two other Sweet 16s and having a few recruiting classes land in the top five. Miller continued what Olson built, and it's a testament to this program's longevity given that its reputation prior to winning it all in was that of a March paper tiger, due to how many times the highly seeded Wildcats didn't make the second weekend.

It's amazing to consider how good Ohio State's basketball program has been for the better part of seven decades, and yet it will forever pale in the shadows against Buckeye football. OSU hoops isn't considered a top job in the sport, but all things considered, maybe it should be?

All of the resources with a fraction of the pressure. A great city that's not too small, not too big, and placed within driving distance of so much talent. It won the title in with Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek in going-away fashion, with each win by a margin of at least 17 points. Lucas is, in full, the best player in school history, a three-time consensus All-America. Matta made Ohio State a top program during his tenure, and getting the Buckeyes to the title game and Final Four.

Taylor had the longest tenure of any Ohio State coach, and the title still looms large there, but Matta easily exceeded expectations.

OSU has 20 regular-season titles and owns wins over ranked opponents in the past 70 years. Jim Boeheim would never take sole credit for this, but let's come correct: He's more responsible for his team's placement on this list than any coach at any school.

That's because Boeheim has set a men's Division I record for longest affiliation with any school in history. He played at Syracuse, and when you include his playing days and time as an SU assistant, Boeheim has spent all but nearly three years of his adult life at SU.

Fifty-four of his 76 years on this soil involve him with the program. He is Orange through thick and thin -- and yes there have been controversies, highs and lows and chapters upon chapters of SU hoops history. He is that program, through thick and thin -- and yes there have been controversies, highs and lows and chapters upon chapters of Orange hoops history.

He's won 1, games in 44 seasons though more than have been taken off the books. Syracuse's home venue, the Carrier Dome, is also part of the viewing tapestry of college hoops, as the stadium has been the reason the school has led in attendance in most years over the past three decades and is unique to the sport. The basketball team plays there, as opposed to a traditional facility, in part because the football team for decades wasn't popular enough to sustain it being a football-only venue.

Cuse has a close race for best player in school history: Bing, Anthony, Washington and Coleman are all right there. A mild stunner in the top Cincinnati may not be a top 25 team heading into this season, but since the s Cincy has routinely provided Final Four-worthy teams, produced pros, been a staple in the AP Top 25 and more often than not worked its way to the top of its conference.

The Bearcats have been in 23 of the past 28 Big Dances and managed to keep up with the joneses despite playing conference hopscotch, going from the Missouri Valley to independence to the Metro to the Great Midwest to Conference USA to the Big East and now in the past eight seasons, the American.

No team in this ranking's top 25 has moved around more than Cincinnati, but the school wasn't pinned down by it. That's impressive. UC won the and '62 national championships -- but it also made the Final Four in '59, '60 and ' Through the first 15 years of the NCAA Tournament this was one of the five or six best programs in college hoops.

Truth is, Cincinnati hasn't fallen off much since then. Gary Clark and Jarron Cumberland have been big-time guys in recent seasons, but I can't close out this capsule without bringing up Nick Van Exel and Yancy Gates, a couple of guys who define Bearcat basketball as well as anyone.

No team did more for its standings on this list in the past half-decade than good ol' Nova. A modern blue blood? Perhaps more than that. The Wildcats have three national championships , , and have become an annual preseason top 10 team.

Jay Wright has built a Big East dynasty and there is no slowing on the horizon. Villanova's prideful past begins with the tournament it was in the Final Four , and it's been super steady since. Rollie Massimino had some tough seasons in the early '70s but by Villanova was a ranked regular, capping its existence with the unforgettable win in the' 85 championship game over mighty Georgetown.

Massimino would win games with Nova, was replaced by Steve Lappas, who went and was viewed as a setback. That's really the bar, here. Now Wright is 20 seasons into his Nova career and has a record with two national titles, three Final Fours and is in command of the Big East.

Storrs, Connecticut, can now claim to be home to one of the 10 best programs in college basketball history on the men's side -- and certainly the best in women's hoops. This means UConn is the best basketball school in America from a historical perspective. The Huskies have won 31 league titles, a hefty portion of those coming back during the Yankee Conference days.

When you think back to the s, a few programs stand out for how they broke through to a new status in the sport. UConn is at the top of the list. Jim Calhoun redefined what was possible at this northeast outpost when he arrived from Northeastern in and flipped the Huskies into a national power in a little more than a decade's time.

But UConn wasn't only good with Calhoun. It made the NCAAs in '51, '54, ', ', '67, '76 and ' So there was something there. Calhoun just cracked open a behemoth and had some of the top talent from around the country opting into playing in a farm town tucked deep in the heart of Connecticut. UConn's win over Duke in the championship game is the pivot moment where things changed forever, guided by Richard Hamilton, Khalid El-Amin, Kevin Freeman and Ricky Moore, Duke was the presumptive pick to win with one of its greatest rosters ever -- but no.

Since then, the pros have poured through the program and UConn's won three more championships , , All but a few of their NBA picks have come in the past 30 years. The Huskies linking back up with the Big East was a major positive for the program, that league and college basketball.

Calhoun probably won't ever be usurped as the school's best men's coach in history, and Kevin Ollie deserves a nod for winning that unexpected title in '14, but Dan Hurley is in a spot now to keep UConn going as a top program. As you can see, the bar is even higher than that. And now's about that time where the list hits the predictable schools -- and yet Indiana falling outside the top six of the "traditional" blue bloods means a redefining should be in order.

Indiana has long loved its basketball, as a state, as much as any in this country. The Hoosiers are the most important game in town. Bob Knight created an institution in Bloomington, Indiana, winning games vs.

The Hoosiers went one season after the squad that lost in the Elite Eight. Knight and IU also won the whole thing in '81 and ' Indiana was as prominent a program as any in college basketball from through the mid s. The Hall of Famer had a vicious temper, and dogged stubbornness cost him his job in the end, but he's still beloved by plenty in the Hoosier State. His influence on basketball is forever there with the innovative motion offense. He has a quote that should stand taller than all of his others when it comes to basketball: "Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.

The Hoosiers were good before Knight arrived, naturally, winning games from under Branch McCracken and Harry Good, the team's first national title happening in and its second in Guyton, Victor Oladipo. The Hoosiers have taken a step back in the past two decades, though Mike Davis got the team to the title game in '02 and Tom Crean helped the program find its footing after NCAA sanctions under Kelvin Sampson slowed momentum.

The Spartans reached the top of the mountain by winning the National Championship after many years of mediocrity. After struggling in the 80s, Jud Heathcote got things on track in the 90s, setting the stage for Izzo to make MSU one of the all-time great programs. And with a few Final Fours and a second national title along the way, they are solidly among the top programs in college basketball history. Two words: Bobby Knight. In fairness, Branch McCracken deserves some credit too.

He got the ball rolling in the s and coached the Hoosiers to their first two championships. Winning the National Championship is just the tip of the iceberg for Syracuse basketball. The program has become synonymous with Jim Boeheim, which is fine when the head coach stays in place for over 40 years. At the moment, the Orange hold the longest active streak for consecutive winning seasons, which started all the way back in On top of that, the Orange has been to the Final Four in five straight decades.

The Jayhawks have accomplished things that no other college basketball program has done. For starters, they won 14 straight regular-season conference titles. At the moment, they also have record streaks of 30 straight NCAA Tournament appearances and consecutive weeks being ranked. Of course, success is nothing new at Kansas. The Jayhawks were a dominant program as early as the s under legendary coach Phog Allen.

Alas, with just three NCAA Tournament titles, Kansas falls a little short of the other programs that make up the top five.

In fact, Bill Foster handed Coach K a program that was on the rise and reached the Final Four in with Krzyzewski taking over in The point is that Duke had a great tradition before Coach K.

North Carolina has been ranked in the polls more weeks than any other program. The Tar Heels are one of the true heavyweights in college basketball history. Perhaps even more impressive is that five different coaches have contributed to those eight titles. When it comes to the top-five programs of all time, deciding the best is a little like splitting hairs. No other program can claim to have a dynasty like that.

Negative Players : C. Wilcox minus Thomas would go on to become Mr. Irrelevant when the Sacramento Kings used the final pick of the NBA draft to secure his services.

Now, he's very much relevant, helping steer the Boston Celtics toward the top of the Eastern Conference while making the fourth quarter his own personal plaything. Terrence Ross has steadily improved, to the point that he's now an underrated two-way commodity for the Orlando Magic after he and a first-round pick were shipped away from the Toronto Raptors in exchange for Serge Ibaka.

Spencer Hawes can make an offensive impact when he plays. But until the other young former Huskies improve, the school won't move up the pack. Dejounte Murray could easily explode for the San Antonio Spurs next season never doubt the draft decisions made by that organization , and Marquese Chriss has already displayed flashes of raw upside for the Phoenix Suns.

They haven't done enough to finish any higher than No. Positive Players : Chris Paul Negative Players : Ish Smith minus If a player is moving up the draft boards with Wake Forest attached to his resume, the NBA might want to take notice. Those players don't come around too frequently, but they tend to turn into special contributors at the professional level.

Right now, only five former Demon Deacons grace the Association—it was six last season before Tim Duncan hung up his sneakers and started preparing for his eventual Hall of Fame induction. But each member of the quintet has been valuable in Chris Paul remains one of the league's best point guards and overall players , while Jeff Teague has quietly thrived for the Indiana Pacers. James Johnson has broken out in South Beach now that head coach Erik Spoelstra has allowed him to show off the full extent of his versatility, while both Ish Smith and Al-Farouq Aminu have filled key roles for their respective squads.

The volume isn't there—at least, not to the extent you'll see from other schools in this countdown. Negative Players : Adreian Payne minus If it weren't for Draymond Green, the Michigan State Spartans wouldn't have much to show for their troubles. Gary Harris has developed into a solid wing for the Denver Nuggets, but he's the only other Tom Izzo tutee making a positive overall impact.

The rest are veterans filling bench roles with slightly below-average play Zach Randolph and Alan Anderson , former prospects gone sour Adreian Payne and youngsters with chances to grow into bigger minutes Bryn Forbes, Deyonta Davis and Denzel Valentine. The four-year Spartan enjoyed a fantastic career while wearing green and white, but his body type and lack of marketable offensive skill dropped him to No.

The Golden State Warriors snatched him up, and it wasn't until head coach Steve Kerr realized the full breadth of his skill set that he truly broke out into the Defensive Player of the Year candidate and all-around stud he is today.

Green's individual prowess alone—he's No. And if even one of the young prospects can join he and Harris on the positive side of the ledger, Michigan State stands a good chance of moving into the top six. Positive Players : Jimmy Butler If you're searching for a solid wing player, perhaps you should look in Marquette's general direction. Jimmy Butler has performed like a bona fide superstar for the shooting-starved Chicago Bulls, thriving on defense and creating his own shots with aplomb.