This Year’s Team & Our Top Ten Basketball Tradition
Posted by frankpos on April 4, 2008
Here’s a reminder of why this year’s team’s Top Ten finish was great, and together with the 2005 team is helping to restore our Top Ten tradition (#7 out of 328 Division I teams teams–top 2%) . This info for this summary of mine all came from Wikipedia:
Bottom-Line Performance by Card Teams:
| Tradition | Number | National Rank |
|---|---|---|
| All-time NCAA Tournaments | 34 | 6th |
| All-time NCAA Tournament Wins | 57 | 7th |
| All-time NCAA Final Fours | 8 | 7th |
| All-time Winning Percentage | 65.4% | 11th |
The Cardinals have been ranked on 429 occasions in the AP poll, seventh most all-time.
Louisville has 59 1000-point career scorers, edging out North Carolina by one for most all time.
UofL is second all-time in the NCAA with 46 consecutive winning seasons (not current). The Cards played winning basketball from 1944-45 through 1989-90.
Top ten fans and support : Louisville has ranked among the top 10 nationally in average home attendance each of the last 27 years, including the last 22 straight in the nation’s top five.
UofL had the most profitable college basketball program in the nation in 2004-2005[2] and 2006-07[3] and was named the third most valuable college basketball team of 2007 by Forbes Magazine[3].
Coolness: We are generally known in the BBall world as the number one program of all time in dunking. (T -Will and Earl certainly helped restore that in a big way this year particularly.)
It’s for all the reasons above that UofL basketball has been named the seventh best all-time basketball program by Street and Smith’s, The Sporting News, and CBS Sportsline.
And, it all explains why long-time fans–accustomed to such success– so strongly want to see that tradition continue. (It also doesn’t hurt that we’re basketball-crazed Kentuckians by birth, who demand excellence in our teams.)
| NCAA Tournament Champions | |
| (2) 1980, 1986 | |
| NCAA Tournament Final Four | |
| (8) 1959, 1972, 1975, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1986, 2005 | |
| NCAA Tournament Appearances | |
| (34) 1951, 1959, 1961, 1964, 1967, 1968, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2008 |
Why we revere Denny: Under Denny Crum, Louisville posted the highest NCAA tournament record of the 80′s, going to four Final Fours, and winning two NCAA championships.
Strange fact all Card fans know: Surprisingly, with all of their success, the Cards have never held the number one ranking in either of the two major polls.
Other Indications of Program Greatness: Louisville has two representatives in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame: Cardinal All-American and former Washington Bullets All-Star Wes Unseld, who was inducted in 1988, and former coach Denny Crum, who was inducted in ‘94. (And hopefully a third one in Rick Pitino.)
Eighteen Louisville players have earned All-America status, the latest being Francisco Garcia in 2005. The Cardinals have had 57 players taken in the NBA Draft, the latest of whom was also Garcia–at least so far.
The table below shows the consistency of talent through the decades since the mid-50′s. It also shows the great history of home-grown, stay-at-home Louisville talent– and why we have missed it now for a decade, since DeJuan. The 60′s and 70′s were amazing times for local BBall talent…
| Player | Hometown | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Charlie Tyra | Louisville, Kentucky | 1955-57 |
| Dan Goldstein | New York, New York | 1958-59 |
| John Turner | Newport, Kentucky | 1960-61 |
| Wes Unseld | Louisville, Kentucky | 1965-1968 |
| Butch Beard | Hardinsburg, Kentucky | 1968-69 |
| Jim Price | Russellville, Kentucky | 1971-72 |
| Junior Bridgeman | East Chicago, Indiana | 1974-75 |
| Allen Murphy | Birmingham, Alabama | 1974-75 |
| Phil Bond | Louisville, Kentucky | 1975-76 |
| Wesley Cox | Louisville, Kentucky | 1976-77 |
| Rick Wilson | Louisville, Kentucky | 1977-78 |
| Darrell Griffith | Louisville, Kentucky | 1978-80 |
| Lancaster Gordon | Jackson, Mississippi | 1983-84 |
| Pervis Ellison | Savannah, Georgia | 1988-89 |
| Clifford Rozier | Bradenton, Florida | 1993-94 |
| DeJuan Wheat | Louisville, Kentucky | 1996-97 |
| Reece Gaines | Madison, Wisconsin | 2002-03 |
| Francisco García | Bronx, New York | 2004-05 |
It’s worthwhile to note: This year’s team success (around a #5-7 final ranking) is our norm — this is where we need to be every year. Somewhere in the Top Ten –or lurking near by.
It is a high bar we’ve set, but it’s certainly worth striving for.
To excel–in the sport we worship the most. It feels good.
**********************************************************************
Rick Pitino proved once again that he’s worth the big bucks by coaxing this injury and attitude ridden team to a strong Elite 8 finish. (Much less a world-class PR move with The Suit. I tell you, the man is worth the bucks just because of the value of his “branding” Card BBall with his name and rep.)
And, he has reloaded with a Top Five class–and has the pipeline filled now. The rule requiring high school players to play one year of college has benefited high powered coaches like Pitino, who can now use his star power to stockpile top talent now–at least for a year or two.
I don’t know about you– but basketball saved my 2007-2008 sports season, and made me completely forget the disaster that was football.
For that– and a great, great ride this year — I thank this team and RickyP again.
Yes, Indeed…We are the 7th Best BBall Program of All Time « Hell in the Hall - Louisville Sports Blog said
[...] Street & Smith and a few other publications over the years have concurred that U of L is the 7th best program in college basketball history. http://hellinthehall.wordpress.com/2008/04/04/a-reminder-of-our-top-ten-basketball-tradition/ [...]
frankpos said
That’s an excellent point–when we had All-Americans, we have generally done well.
It does boil down at the highest levels to talent. At their peak, a Denny or RickyP can carry a team pretty far–but the team has win it.
I think Rick now has the Rule in place that will allow him to stockpile talent. That’s a helluva class we have coming in, and it looks like Ricky Jr. is reaching down to the sixth grade now.
So…I’m highly optimistic we’ll have the horses to really start enjoying the Pitino era to the fullest.
It hasn’t been bad so far…
kylures said
Basketball was a nice change from football, overperforming from our early expectations. But can we ever lose the desire to get to a true National presence like we experienced in the 80′s? 7th makes you feel pretty good, but not great. What your charts show is that you cannot really achieve greatness without an All American. You must have that go-to guy. And you must have a solid cast of selfless supporting overachievers, which we largely had. Francisco was the last one, maybe Earl will be the next one. Maybe when the Arena is in full swing, some magical year, we will experience that feeling we long for, not just fondness for the Cards and the way it was, but elation in the present moment of athletic achievement.