The True Greatest 50 College Basketball Teams of All-Time

 As I get ready to play the Final 4 who made it through our latest Value Add Basketball Game Tournament to the Final 4 - I wanted to step back and list who I believe the 50 greatest teams actually are based on actual results. 

In celebration of Indiana winning the actual football championship, I plan to next play the last undefeated team - Indiana 1976, against my current No. 1 of all time - the 1972 Bill Walton UCLA. The other semifinal game that has played out is Duke's 2001 team - which does come out 5th in the actual ratings below, against another UCLA dynasty team but not the one you would quite pick - in 1975.

However to get the true Top 50 of all time I used this method.

1. The SRS rating, except for teams from the early years who did not have one - in which case I took their current Value Add Basketball Game rating and multiplied it by 2.5 to get an estimate.

2. If there were more than 100 teams, I then subtracted the SRS of the 100th best team that season which really is needed to put teams on par since with more than 300 teams the best teams stretch further and further ahead of the middle team.

3. Almost all these teams won the title, but if they did not they lost 2 points for every game they fell short. So 1999 Duke would have been a 30.89 for 3rd greatest team ever, but they lost in the title game so they slipped to 6th.

No team who did not make the title game made the top 50, so I would give the honorable mention to four Final 4 teams - Houston in both 1968 and 2021, Auburn in 2019 and Kentucky in 2015 - all of whom would be on this list with one more win in their season.

In going through these new calculation and comparing it to the player cards we had for all 300 all-time great teams in the game, we calculated that we did need to downgrade the overall defensive team ratings of a few teams, and upgrading the rating for six teams. The AdjDunk rating on the card adjusts for level of competition and how well the team's overall defense prevented opponents from scoring. These nine teams have all been updated in the game, but here are the links to the nine who were adjusted so you can print them out to play, and then we tell you where the team ranks on their current player cards in the Value Add Basketball Game.

DePaul 1980 - Mark Aguirre - Rating -3 which lowers them to the 134th best of 300 all-time teams in the game.

Duke 1992 - Christian Laettner - Rating improved to +10, the 14th best in the game

Florida 2006 - Joakim Noah - Rating improved to +11, the 9th best in the game

Georgetown 1984 - Patrick Ewing - Rating improved to +7, the 24th best in the game

Kansas 1997 - Paul Pierce - Rating lowered to -2, the 110th best

Kansas 2008 - Mario Chalmers - Rating lowered to +2, the 60th best

Michigan 1989 - Glen Rice -- Rating improved to +9, the 17th best in the game

Ohio St. 1960 - Jerry Lucas - Rating- improved to +13, the 6th best in the game

UCLA 1967 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar - +18 rating (best cards) - Rating improved to +18, the best cards in the game. UCLA_1975_-_Dave_Meyers_1769493325.pdf - Rating  The updating rankings and list of all games played are kept on this google sheet.

The most fascinating note is that I wondered about the miracle 1983 NC State team ranking so high in my game, since they were a 7.5 point underdog to Houston when they won the title. However, the SRS rating actually picked NC State as the better team than Houston that season, though Houston also makes the list.

Rnk	Team	Year		SRS>100th	Tourney	Adjusted
1	UCLA	1972	Bill Walton #44	32.56	Champion	32.56
2	UCLA	1968	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar #3	32.18	Champion	32.18
3	UCLA	1967	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar #3	29.04	Champion	29.04
4	Long Island University	1939	Irv Targoff	VABG * 2.5	Champion	27.5
5	Duke	2001	Shane Battier	26.94	Champion	26.94
6	Duke	1999	Shane Battier	28.89	Runner-up	26.89
7	UCLA	1969	Kareem Abdul-Jabbar #3	26.64	Champion	26.64
8	Indiana	1976	Scott May	25.88	Champion	25.88
9	UCLA	1973	Bill Walton #44	27.63	Runner-up	25.63
10	Ohio State	1960	Jerry Lucas #46, John Havlicek #29	25.46	Champion	25.46
11	NC State	1974	David Thompson	25.04	Champion	25.04
12	San Francisco	1956	Bill Russell #6	VABG * 2.5	Champion	25
13	UCLA	1970	Sidney Wicks	24.97	Champion	24.97
14	Kentucky	1996	Antoine Walker	24.79	Champion	24.79
15	North Carolina	1998	Vince Carter	24.52	Champion	24.52
16	UCLA	1975	Dave Meyers	24.3	Champion	24.3
17	Georgetown	1984	Patrick Ewing #40	23.5	Champion	23.5
18	North Carolina	2005	Sean May	22.68	Champion	22.68
19	North Carolina	1982	Michael Jordan #1, James Worthy #56	22.6	Champion	22.6
20	NC State	1983	Lorenzo Charles	22.2	Champion	22.2
21	Michigan	1989	Glen Rice	23.29	Runner-up	21.29
22	Kansas	2008	Mario Chalmers	21.09	Champion	21.09
23	Duke	1992	Christian Laettner	20.95	Champion	20.95
24	UNLV	1990	Larry Johnson	20.28	Champion	20.28
25	Villanova	2018	Mikal Bridges	20.23	Champion	20.23
26	Michigan State	2000	Mateen Cleaves	20.02	Champion	20.02
27	CCNY	1950	Floyd Lane	VABG * 2.5	Champion	20
28	Cincinnati	1962	Paul Hogue	VABG * 2.5	Champion	20
29	Connecticut	1999	Richard Hamilton	19.83	Champion	19.83
30	North Carolina	2009	Tyler Hansbrough	19.81	Champion	19.81
31	Arkansas	1994	Corliss Williamson	19.72	Champion	19.72
32	Connecticut	2023	Adama Sanogo	19.7	Champion	19.7
33	Duke	2010	Jon Scheyer	19.45	Champion	19.45
34	Duke	1991	Christian Laettner	21.44	Runner-up	19.44
35	Connecticut	2004	Ben Gordon	19.4	Champion	19.4
36	Virginia	2019	Kyle Guy	19.05	Champion	19.05
37	Kentucky	2012	Anthony Davis #71	18.98	Champion	18.98
38	Louisville	2013	Russ Smith	18.94	Champion	18.94
39	Duke	2015	Justise Winslow	18.9	Champion	18.9
40	Houston	1983	Hakeem Olajuwon #13, Clyde Drexler #53	20.7	Runner-up	18.7
41	Gonzaga	2017	Nigel Williams-Goss	20.7	Runner-up	18.7
42	North Carolina	2017	Justin Jackson	18.63	Champion	18.63
43	Baylor	2021	Jared Butler	18.61	Champion	18.61
44	Maryland	2002	Juan Dixon	18.4	Champion	18.4
45	Florida	2007	Walter Clayton Jr.	18.24	Champion	18.24
46	Michigan	1993	Chris Webber #76	18.2	Champion	18.2
47	Villanova	2016	Josh Hart	17.78	Champion	17.78
48	UCLA	1995	Ed O'Bannon	19.2	Runner-up	17.2
49	Kansas	1997	Paul Pierce #62	17.2	Runner-up	15.2
50	Cincinnati	1960	Oscar Robertson #9	VABG * 2.5	Champion	15