NCAA Basketball: Ranking the last 25 NCAA Tournament champions

16) 2004 UConn Huskies

Record: 33-6, 12-4 in Big East

The UConn Huskies have won a lot of national championships over the last 25 years, huh?

The Huskies, led by All-Americans Ben Gordon and Emeka Okafor, started the season as the No. 1 team in the country, but suffered their first loss just four games in: a 16-point defeat to the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. That was the only loss in a 14-1 start, but then they lost five games in a month and a half.

UConn never dropped out of the top 10, though questions arose about how good they actually were during those struggles in January and February. However, as was the case with the 2011 UConn team, they used the Big East Tournament to get hot, winning that tournament with relative ease. You could say Jim Calhoun had a knack for getting his teams to play their best at the right time.

Things continued to be easy for the Huskies in the NCAA Tournament, as they won all four games in their regional by at least 16 points. Of course, it helped they didn’t face a team seeded higher than No. 6.

That led to an epic Final Four showdown with the Duke Blue Devils, which UConn won by one before avenging that first loss to Georgia Tech in the national championship game.

Okafor was named the Final Four’s MOP. Both he and Gordon were selected in the top three in the 2004 NBA Draft. In total, six players from the roster ended up being first-round selections.

Despite all of that, UConn’s six losses keep them out of the top 15. Why? Only one team above them has more losses.