Why Kentucky Has the Most Bragging Rights in College Basketball

Why Kentucky Has the Most Bragging Rights in College Basketball

We Hit the Record Books to Determine the Best College Program of All Time

Ben Cohen and Andrew Beaton in the Wall Street Journal

Any argument about which college-basketball program is the best of all time comes with a guarantee: No one is going to win the debate.

What makes the conversation so contentious is that there isn’t a perfect way to measure historical might. Every men’s basketball blue blood can make its own claim of supremacy. UCLA has its record 11 national championships. Kentucky has the most victories. North Carolina can point to its unmatched total of 18 Final Four appearances.

With the college season tipping off on Friday, The Wall Street Journal came up with its own calculation. We examined the historical results of 156 schools—the sport’s winningest programs plus other teams that have made the NCAA tournament in the last five years—and then stacked them up against each other. The goal was to figure out each school’s winning percentage in its head-to-head series against these other basketball schools. Which school, in other words, truly has the most bragging rights?

The team that came out on top: the Kentucky Wildcats.

Kentucky, which is also college basketball’s top team in terms of winning percentage, leads nearly 88% of its series against this select group of the most relevant teams in college basketball, according to the schools’ records.

As any citizen of Big Blue Nation could tell you, Kentucky rose to prominence with Adolph Rupp as the Wildcats’ coach between 1930 and 1972, when they won four of their eight national titles. Joe B. Hall, Rick Pitino and Tubby Smith also won championships at Kentucky. The program has been revitalized in recent years by John Calipari, who raised his first title banner in Rupp Arena in 2012.

Our historical champion is also the No. 1 team in this year’s preseason polls—even though its current roster doesn’t have much history. Kentucky, which lost to Connecticut in last season’s national-title game, is once again in the hunt with a roster of nine high-school All-Americans, eight of whom are freshmen or sophomores.

It isn’t a surprise that Kentucky won our study. But the rest of the top five represents a shake-up of the commonly accepted order.

No. 2 is Duke. By standard measurements, the Blue Devils don’t rank so high. They are fifth in winning percentage, and five other schools have matched or exceeded Duke’s four national titles. But Duke leads 83% of its series against relevant programs, second-best nationally.

Kansas is No. 3, despite owning the second-most victories in basketball history after Kentucky. UCLA, the team with the most titles ever, has a slight edge over North Carolina, which is No. 2 in winning percentage.

Just as underdogs always emerge in the NCAA tournament, there are further upsets in these rankings. UNLV, a 1980s powerhouse with the NCAA’s fourth-highest winning percentage, leads the pack of schools from non-major conferences in this study. The list of other surprising mid-majors includes Dayton (32nd), Bradley (33rd) and New Mexico (38th).

Then there are the historical oddities. Those are to be expected when some of these series consist of just one game many years ago. While the Ivy League performed poorly—Princeton, Penn, Cornell and Harvard all placed outside of the top 75—the eggheads managed to score some victories. Princeton, for example, has an all-time edge on Georgetown, despite famously losing by one to the Hoyas in the 1989 NCAA tournament as a No. 16 seed.

Kentucky is vulnerable to these peculiarities, too. Although the Wildcats lead their series against Duke, Kansas and UCLA, the small list of teams that have an all-time edge on Kentucky includes Saint Louis and UAB. Those losses will linger, too: Kentucky isn’t scheduled to play either this season.