ESPN Ranks Every National Champion: How the Kentucky Wildcats Fare

This week college basketball crowned another champion. Starting with the Oregon Webfoots in 1939, there have now been 84 NCAA Tournament champions. Your University of Kentucky Wildcats have taken the title back to Lexington on average once every 10 years. How do those champions stack up with the rest? ESPN attempted to answer that question.

In the aftermath of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, ESPN’s John Gasaway ranked every single championship team. An imperfect exercise, the pecking order was based on the “relative strength” of each team. Simply put, “how much did each team dominate?”

As a Kentucky fan, naturally I scrolled to find the Wildcats first, then got mad they were ranked higher. As a natural observer, I learned that it’s a lot harder to dominate the game the way teams did 50 years ago.

The 2012 Kentucky National Championship team played 10 more games than the undefeated 1972 UCLA Bruins. UCLA only needed to win four NCAA Tournament games to win a title. Of course it’s going to be more difficult to run the table against a field of 68.

Weighing the dominant performances of the 70s vs. the athletes of today is impossible. Bill Walton is great, but I’m sure Anthony Davis would have swatted his shots into the stands. Today’s athletes are clearly superior. Instead of debating who would win each game, this exercise illustrates how well each team dominated during their respective run to an NCAA Championship.

Where Kentucky Ranks Among National Championship Winners

Three Kentucky teams appear in the Top 25 and the order might surprise you.

No. 73: 1948 (36-3) “The Fabulous Five”
No. 69: 1949 (32-2)
No. 66: 1958 (23-6) “The Fiddlin’ Five”
No. 62: 1951 (32-2) Billy Spivey, Cliff Hagan and Co.
No. 41: 1998 (35-4) “The Comeback Cats”
No. 23: 2012 (38-2) Anthony Davis, MKG and Co.
No. 17: 1978 (30-2) The Goose was Golden
No. 12: 1996 (34-2) The Untouchables

It’s difficult to discern how to rank teams from the Baby Boom, but anybody in the state of Kentucky will tell you the Fabulous Five was the best of Rupp’s early teams. They have more losses than others because they competed to represent America in the ’48 Olympics in Great Britain. Despite losing that tournament in Madison Square Garden, Rupp coached Team USA to gold with five Kentucky Wildcats on the roster.

One might also argue that Anthony Davis’ dominant 2012 season usurps Givens’ all-time National Championship performance, but that’s splitting hairs. What is noteworthy: The Untouchables are the only team since 1990 that’s ranked in the top 15. There is also not a team since 2012 ranked higher than John Calipari’s championship team.

[ESPN: Ranking all 84 men’s national champions, including 2023 winner UConn]