NCAA Basketball: Top 25 programs statistically of the last 10 years

By Joey Loose | Sep 23, 2018

SAN ANTONIO, TX - APRIL 02: Confetti sits on the court after the Villanova Wildcats defeated the Michigan Wolverines during the 2018 NCAA Men's Final Four National Championship game at the Alamodome on April 2, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. Villanova defeated Michigan 79-62. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /

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SAN ANTONIO, TX – APRIL 02: Confetti sits on the court after the Villanova Wildcats defeated the Michigan Wolverines during the 2018 NCAA Men’s Final Four National Championship game at the Alamodome on April 2, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas. Villanova defeated Michigan 79-62. (Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) /

Who really is the best program of the last ten years? Using statistics and no opinions, here are the top-25 in NCAA Basketball.

Arguments can and will be made by fans of every program, insisting that their team is better than another team, perhaps better than that bitter rival. The purpose of this article is to create and share a formula that will take all of the fan-inflicted bias out of the comparisons. I have created a rating system that I believe will effectively rank every college basketball program over the course of the previous decade giving us an unbiased top 25 programs of the last ten years. The system consists of two portions, which will both be thoroughly explained below:

Efficiency Ratings

The first portion of the formula compares Bart Torvik efficiency ratings from each of the last ten seasons. The calculation is not a cumulative efficiency rating, but an average of each team’s end of season ranking against the rest of the NCAA. The efficiency ratings give a solid focus on teams’ regular season success and account for 60% of the formula. Since NCAA Tournament games (and other tournaments) are included in the calculation for the ratings, I decided it should count for more than half of the total, giving an appropriate emphasis to regular season success.

NCAA Tournament Success

The second portion of the formula focuses on NCAA Tournament success, with a point system based on progress in each Tournament. 64 points to the Champion, 32 to the Finalist, 16 for Final Four, 8 for Elite Eight, 4 for Sweet Sixteen, 2 for Round of 32, 1 for Round of 64, and 0.5 to teams that lose in the First Four games. This section is not an average but a comparative total of how many points each team acquired. This accounts for 40% of the formula.

As an additional note, keep in mind that this metric is not concrete and the results would slightly change if the percentage of each metric were changed. That being said, I hope you enjoy some of the results that have been composed under this formula.

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