NCAA Basketball: Top 10 players to wear jersey No. 23 in 2023-24 season

Talent may seem inherent in the very best athletes in the sporting world, but a lot has to go right to truly succeed in sports. Many careers have been lost prematurely to injury or other ailments and some of the best athletes in the country got overlooked at some point in their careers. The world of college basketball is a great example of this as awesome athletes constantly pop up at lesser known mid-major programs on a regular basis.

This sport provides talent at every level and gives thousands of basketball players a chance to succeed. We see every season how players that are overlooked or disregarded can shine on the national stage. At the same time, we obviously see greatness out of the great programs. The bottom line is that college basketball provides intrigue at nearly every level, in every state, and in every collegiate gym.

We’re unveiling more of that greatness with the next piece in our article series. We’ve taken a closer look at a number of college basketball players from just this past season while considering them in a very unorthodox way. We’re breaking down and ranking players based only on their jersey numbers. There’s nothing inherent about jersey numbers and it doesn’t realistically matter in the slightest what numbers a player has on their back; it has simply been an interesting exercise.

The focus today turns towards #23, the number popularized by Michael Jordan during his prolific basketball career both at North Carolina and in the NBA. Forty years after Michael donned that number for the Tar Heels we’ll be seeing who from this past season really stood out with #23 on their back. This all begins with a number of honorable mentions before a deeper dive into the ten best of the past season.