NCAA Basketball: Ranking of 20 best college teams from last 20 years
By Joey Loose
17. 2013 Louisville
Yes, this Louisville team won the national championship, and yes, that championship was vacated after allegations that later surfaced. For all intents and purposes, we’re going to focus purely on the basketball on this Cardinals squad, and it was quite the program. In the final year of the old Big East, the Cardinals followed up a Final Four run in 2012 by going all the way.
For these Cardinals, who won 35 games on the year, it was guards Russ Smith (18.7 ppg, 3.3 rpg) and Peyton Siva (10.0 ppg, 5.7 apg) who really stood out. Luke Hancock’s performance in the Final Four earned him the Final Four MOP, while it’s hard to forget the devastating leg injury suffered by Kevin Ware. Frontcourt pieces Chane Behanan, Gorgui Dieng, and Montrezl Harrell also played an important role on this team.
The Cardinals did not lose another game after a classic 5-overtime loss to Notre Dame in early February. A very talented roster led and recruited by Rick Pitino put everything together and brought home Louisville’s third (at the time) national championship. Looking just at the basketball, this was a great squad that got the job done in the end, knocking out Duke, Wichita State, and Michigan in their final three games. We’ll ignore the other stuff because it hasn’t been pretty for Louisville basketball these last few years.