OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA?

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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#21 » by Rupert Murdoch » Thu Nov 10, 2011 8:34 pm

DJQuick wrote:Even though I am a Duke fan I can't hate on what had to be the best college basketball team to not win it all. The 83/84 UNC Tarheels. This team featured a back court of Kenny Smith and Micheal Jordan, and a front court of Sam Perkins and Brad Daughtery.


You would take '84 UNC over '99 Duke? I'm a Maryland fan and that '99 Duke team was absolutely awesome. Maryland was absoutely stacked that year with Stevie Francis, Obinna Ekezie, Laron Profit, and Terrence Morris along with a young Juan Dixon and Lonny Baxter and that Duke team absolutely ran them out of the building in both of their regular season meetings. That '99 Duke team had four guys drafted in the top 14 that year along with players like Shane Battier and Chris Carrawell. That team would have murdered their 2010 team on a neutral court and would have beaten their '01 team as well.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#22 » by glenclose » Sun Nov 13, 2011 3:01 am

fab five

also throw in the 98 carolina team with carter and jamison. they also had cota, ndiaye, shammond williams and bredan haywood who was only a frosh or soph at the time
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#23 » by NYK_UNLV » Thu Dec 1, 2011 10:22 am

91 UNLV beat their opponents on average by 25+ ppg. We beat #2 Arkansas AT Arkansas by double digits. We were so good, that when we lost to Duke in the final four, there was speculation the game was thrown (though I personally just think Duke played great and we played not so great.)

Still the closest the NCAA has had to an undefeated throughout the season since IU and UCLA
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#24 » by Starkiller » Fri Dec 16, 2011 6:50 pm

The UK team w/ Wall, Cousins, Patterson, Orton, Bledsoe, etc...may go down as one of the better ones.
This ^
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#25 » by miltk » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:05 am

wiff wrote:They say hindsight is 20/20. And looking back at the 2007/08 UCLA Bruins I can't help but to scratch my head and wonder how in the heck did this team not win an NCAA title that year?

They had 4 NBA players on that squad and two of them should be All-Stars this year.

Kevin Love
Image
And although he looks a little "touched" in this photo the dude has had what, three 30pts/20rebs this year?

Russel Westbrook
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I think the picture speaks for itself.

Luc Richard Mbah a Moute one of the best defenders in the NBA. He was pretty good in college too.
Image

Darren Collison
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Really a fine young PG in the NBA. Maybe not elite status but he's a very nice young player.

Looking back now I just don't see how this team didn't win the whole thing.

Thoughts or any other team in the last 15 years or so that looking back at the talent they had makes you shake your head at how did they not go father in the dance considering the success they've had in the NBA?


your mistake is extrapolating what they do in the pros. from that pov, duke, ky, and unc should all be taking turns putting up a banner. ucla had no perimeter shooter. afflalo left the year before. but the the biggest mistake was ben howland leaving shipp on cdr, and collison on rose. it should have been westbrook on rose, and luc on cdr. by leaving rose and cdr unhindered, howland let memphis have free reign all game. i don't know if westbrook would have had any affect on rose, but luc would have surely shut down cdr.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#26 » by ryan44 » Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:29 am

If we're talking about a college team, then to me we're talking about how stacked the team was in terms of college players, not necessarily how they performed in the NBA. With that said, the 1998-99 Duke team is probably up there in terms on not winning the title. Trajan Langdon was arguably more prolific than JJ Redick as a shooter in college. Corey Maggette was sensational as a freshman. Elton Brand and Shane Battier were both tearing it up as sophomores.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#27 » by miltk » Thu Mar 1, 2012 12:57 pm

ryan44 wrote:If we're talking about a college team, then to me we're talking about how stacked the team was in terms of college players, not necessarily how they performed in the NBA. With that said, the 1998-99 Duke team is probably up there in terms on not winning the title. Trajan Langdon was arguably more prolific than JJ Redick as a shooter in college. Corey Maggette was sensational as a freshman. Elton Brand and Shane Battier were both tearing it up as sophomores.


in fact, any number of duke teams in the 90's were loaded simply because no one left their program until 1999, whilst other top teams were losing their talent early.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#28 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:18 pm

dockingsched wrote:russell westbrook was a project with more potential than actual production and darren collison, though solid with ucla, wasn't anything special as evidenced by his late first round pick status. luc wasn't anything special either, and has far surpassed what people expected of him.

their nba success just shows how great ben howland is at preparing his players for nba style ball. ucla has the most players in the nba, with a ton of guards (though some who didn't play for howland)

anyway, making it to the final four and losing to a derrick rose led memphis tigers team isn't anything to scoff at, considering the tigers later had to forfeit all those games.


I really see this very differently.

Russ was a huge hit with the team that year because of all the little things he did to fill the gaps. He was Pac 10 DPOY for crying out loud, and filled in at PG when Collison was out. It's hard to imagine a player you'd reallistically expect to get around Love & Collison that would work better, unless you're talking about...

Luc Richard. Great defender, did a lot without needing the ball. And here's the thing also:

He was as good as a freshman as he was at the end of his junior year.
He was about as good as a rookie as he is now.

Basically, the guy came with his game largely already formed before it Howland, and its shown both remarkably to be about as effective in the pros as in college and yet unable to really be built upon.

Using Collison being drafted late in the first round as proof he wasn't special seems odd to me, given that if he hadn't drastically outperformed where he was drafted, this thread probably isn't being made.

I'm glad you pointed out that UCLA has essentially been the most successful program in the last decade at turning out NBA players, as that's on my mind lately along with the fact that the program fell off a cliff in recent years, and now we have a scandal where it's basically clear Howland is actually quite limited as a miracle worker.

It makes me wonder if an alternative explanation is actually better. That being, UCLA got lucky and managed to acquire the most talent out of any program out there, and Howland still couldn't win a title with them, so now when he's had not as amazing talent with far weaker player leadership, we're seeing how fortunate he'd been before.

I don't know. I'm a UCLA alum, and I'm really discouraged with all that's happening right now, so maybe I need to gain more perspective.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#29 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:24 pm

fishnc wrote:Memphis had the two best players on the court. Sure CDR sucks now, but he was a baller in college.


What's amazing is that a lot of us watched that Memphis-UCLA game and said, "UCLA's well coached, but other than Westbrook, they just don't have NBA level athletes to matchup with Memphis' stacked group."

So what happens? Turns out UCLA had 4 NBA level starter, Memphis had only 1, and the best scorer on the court was a Memphis guy who hasn't made it in the NBA. To say I underestimated UCLA's talent back then is an understatement.

Tangent: The fact that Rose only passed up CDR at the very end of the year that year, and yet immediately did drastically bigger things in the pros, really says to me that this is a difference in opportunity to start with more than anything else. No CDR was never going to reach anywhere near Rose's current heights, but I think he's capable of more than he's shown.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#30 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Mar 4, 2012 8:27 pm

To the OP's actual question, it's hard for me to say any team of the last decade matched the talent of the best from previous eras.

THE team that comes to mind for me is the Phi Slamma Jamma Houston Cougars with Dream & Glide. Amazing talent, never won a title, only missed out due to fluky fluky stuff.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#31 » by Doctor MJ » Sun Mar 4, 2012 9:09 pm

BubbaTee wrote: :-?

Don't get too caught up in raw stats. Webber was a legit MVP candidate, All-NBA 1st/2nd teamer, and a #1 option on a title contender. Basically right smack in the middle of the "franchise player" category. Can you really see a team being a legit title contender with Love as the #1 guy?


You very much overrate Webber. Dude only rose to that kind of prominence when the Kings got good, and while he was on the Kings he was jacking up shots inefficiently with all kinds of ball dominance that wasn't missed much at all when he went down.

Webber should never have been an MVP candidate, and I think Love has an excellent shot to be at least on Webber's level.

Last note: Webber does deserve major praise for his passing ability - which was why he was allowed to be so ball dominant as a big. People do need to remember though that Love himself is an excellent passer. I don't expect him to ever be used as a point forward now because he wasn't used like that before, and now the team has Rubio who is drastically superior on this front to Webber or Love, but I think Love could have done work along these lines.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#32 » by Dr Positivity » Wed Mar 7, 2012 3:08 am

Well, it's how you play and not who you are. So I wouldn't call them near the best to never win a title. More like one of the most talented.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#33 » by jlin22 » Mon Mar 12, 2012 2:26 am

Best college team should not necessarily mean team with the most NBA drafted players.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#34 » by Chuck Newhouse » Fri Mar 23, 2012 4:25 pm

NYK_UNLV wrote:91 UNLV beat their opponents on average by 25+ ppg. We beat #2 Arkansas AT Arkansas by double digits. We were so good, that when we lost to Duke in the final four, there was speculation the game was thrown (though I personally just think Duke played great and we played not so great.)

Still the closest the NCAA has had to an undefeated throughout the season since IU and UCLA


I think anyone who posts on this thread should have to mention whether or not they actually watched the 1991 Rebels. They were so good that, even though I have been a huge ACC fan since before Jordan was even there, none of those teams played like the Rebels. They were easily better than the team from a year earlier that won it all. Many people talked about a game against a pro team back then (this wasn't so far fetched because college talent was more mature back then).

Coach K should have got medal for out couching Tark that night. It took a masterpiece for Duke to win and they got it.

On a side note can you imagine Kentucky this year if some of the players over the last 2 seasons had stayed?
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#35 » by LoveDaBoo » Sat Mar 24, 2012 2:45 am

The way Westbrook and Love are going now, yeah, it looks like that was one of the top teams of all time, talent-wise. M-M & Collison are decent in their own right, but Love and Westbrook are both inarguably top 15 players, and likely will be for the next 5-10 years. That's phenomenal talent for one NCAA team.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#36 » by ElGee » Tue Apr 3, 2012 7:10 pm

1991 UNLV may be the best college team ever, PERIOD. (The large caveat there is that some of the older teams, particularly UCLA squads, were so stacked that they have just as good of an argument.) But 1990 UNLV kind of blew me away as a kid. The 1991 team was better.

The NCAA plays a single elimination tournament. Take a good college team like Duke (they did win in 92 again) and it's possible for UNLV to lose, but I don't think they lose a 7-game series very often to Duke. Furthermore, next time that game is on classic sports check out some of the coaching and officiating. Tark is outcoached, but if IIRC Greg Anthony had some questionable foul calls (he ultimately DQed at 3:51 left, with UNLV outscored 8-1 to close without Anthony) and the GWing free throws from Laettner were off a pretty ticky-tack foul. It looked like LJ was hacked by Laettner at 1:31 (no call). At 1:01 Davis scores an and-1 but it looks like there absolutely no contact. Any of those change, and no one even remembers how close the National Semis were for UNLV.

The point is, a team's strength isn't gauged by one game. Larry Johnson was a phenomenal college player, and that he was flanked by monsters like Anthony, Stacey Augmon and good players like Anderson Hunt kind of made it feel unfair. Consider this:

-1991 UNLV's SRS was 31. (MOV 27)
-They were ranked No. 1 every week of the season.
-They had one RS game decided by single digits all year (7 point win at No. 2 Arkansas!)
-Before the Duke game, they had a 45-game win streak and won their previous 10 Tourney games by 18.3 ppg

By comparison, 82 North Carolina (Jordan, Worthy, Perkins) had an SRS of 20. They finished with a 16-game streak and won their Tourney games by 4.6 ppg.

My HM would be to 99 Duke.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#37 » by enuggz » Thu Apr 12, 2012 5:44 pm

This is definitely the 1991 UNLV squad that team was just crazy and if Greg Anthony doesn't foul out someone else could have a shot at this award.

Runner up for me is the 1997 Kansas Jayhawks - Raef LaFrentz, Paul Pierce, Scot Pollard, Billy Thomas, Jacque Vaughn no way they should have lost to Arizona.
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#38 » by miltk » Wed May 2, 2012 10:02 am

o
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#39 » by miltk » Wed May 2, 2012 10:19 am

i'll bet everyone here was born after 1975.

UCLA 73/74...walton, wilkes, meyers, johnson, washington, trgovich, mccarter

the admittedly biggest disappointment in walton's career
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Re: OT Best College team to never win a title? 2007/08 UCLA? 

Post#40 » by joseph mamah » Sun Jul 29, 2012 4:38 pm

That ucla team didnt win it but most of those players won two or three titles while at ucla.Fab Five by far if webber would have had some balls and not run away to the nba after making one of the biggest mistakes in sports history they would have got one. anybody who thinks love is a better player than webber was needs to watch a little more basketball. Webber was the best PF not named tim in the league in his prime, if it wasnt for shaq and kobe and the juggernaut that was the spurs he would have carried that mediocre kings team to a few finals and if he didnt choke maybe even a title or two. love is good but he'll never be the best player on a championship caliber team.

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