CBSSports.com Ranks 16 Best Teams of All-Time — Let the Debate Begin
Posted by EJacoby on February 22nd, 2012Evan Jacoby is a regular contributor for RTC. You can find him @evanjacoby on Twitter.
With an upcoming four-part show coming on the CBS Sports Network that will highlight the 16 greatest teams in college basketball history, the guys at CBSSports.com decided to put together their own lists for fans to see. You can see their full ballots laid out here, as voted by Jeff Goodman, Gary Parrish, Matt Norlander, and Jeff Borzello. The show is still a month away from broadcasting, but the discussion has already begun. To make things easier for you, we’ll give a rundown of the consensus rankings they chose, along with some trend analysis about their selections.
See above for a readable spreadsheet of the CBS rankings. By consensus, the guys rated the 1968 and 1973 UCLA teams as the two greatest teams ever. Hard to go wrong there, as both teams were National Champions as part of the Bruins’ streak of seven consecutive titles. The ’73 team went undefeated in Bill Walton’s junior year, while the ’68 team lost just one game in Lew Alcindor’s junior year, a game midway through the regular season against Houston at the AstroDome in which Alcindor was recovering from an injury. The Bruins got their revenge that season by blowing out Houston in the Final Four by over 30 points en route to the title.