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

[tha best]

You are really trying to make an argument that more talent isn't the best way to win games? Please....

so you're saying the 04 pistons team was more talented than the lakers???

[BIG FURB]

The 1997 and 98 UNC squads deserve a mention. 2 Final Four appearances, 4 pros, 2 of them nba allstars, definitely shoulda got at least one title

[Flaming Mo]

Another team to consider: Houston Cougars in the early 80s and the Phi Slama Jama days. Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Michael Young and a lot of other talented players. Multiple Final Fours and some tough endings.

[Jonny Blaze]

1990-91 UNLV Runnin' Rebels didn't win and that was the best college basketball team I ever saw. The year before that they won it all, but it was a slightly different team and the 90-91 team went undefeated and lost by 2 to Duke in the Final Four, 79-77

This


1991 UNLV and 1999 Duke are by far the two best teams Ive ever seen that didnt win it all.

If the NCAA tournament was set up with 7 game series like the NBA....I would put 1991 UNLV up against anyone.

[MountBiyombo]

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.

[Rupert Murdoch]

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.

[glenclose]

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

[NYK_UNLV]

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

[Starkiller]

The UK team w/ Wall, Cousins, Patterson, Orton, Bledsoe, etc...may go down as one of the better ones.

[miltk]

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

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

Russel Westbrook

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.


Darren Collison

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.

[ryan44]

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.

[miltk]

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.

[Doctor MJ]

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.

[Doctor MJ]

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.

[Doctor MJ]

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.