NCAA Basketball: Ranking the top 25 programs of all time

Best NCAA Basketball programs of all-time: 22. Gonzaga basketball

The Zags make the cut almost exclusively because of what the program has accomplished since Mark Few took over the program in 1999, but that should be taken as a reflection on how dominant this program has been over the last two decades as opposed to anything else.

Gonzaga has yet to win a national championship like the previous three programs on this list, but that is the only box the program has yet to check.

Let’s put aside their 24 regular-season conference championships – including 22 since 1994 – and 17 conference tournament titles since 1995. They’ve dominated the West Coast Conference the way you’d expect a program of this magnitude to do and, as Mr. Skeptical reading this article thinks, the way they probably should.

That’s a debate for another day (because if you’re a college basketball fan and still don’t respect Gonzaga by now, I don’t know what to tell you), so let’s focus on their NCAA Tournament accomplishments.

They’ve made the Big Dance 21 years in a row – the fifth-longest streak nationally – and have made 10 trips to the Sweet 16 in that time frame, including four Elite Eight appearances and one berth in the national championship game (2017). Many quality programs have not been able to replicate those numbers throughout their program history, let alone over the last two decades.

Gonzaga’s .607 win percentage in the NCAA Tournament also ranks among the best all time.

The only true mid-major program on the list, Gonzaga has earned their reputation as being the program all other mid-majors try to model themselves after.