College basketball coaches around the country had their say, and Kentucky’s 2011-12 national title team didn’t make the cut for the five best teams of the 21st century.
CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled nearly 100 men’s Division I coaches over the summer on a range of topics, including a simple but loaded question: “Who’s the best college basketball team of the 21st century?”
The answer from the coaching world pointed elsewhere. The 2023-24 UConn team collected the most support, finishing with 17 percent of the vote.
Michigan’s 2024-25 squad came in third. Kentucky’s 2011-12 group landed sixth at 10 percent, while the 2014-15 Wildcats were just behind it at seven percent.
A pair of John Calipari-led Kentucky teams did receive votes, but neither cracked the top five. That leaves the 2011-12 team - the one that went 38-2 and brought home the program’s eighth national championship - outside the inner circle in this poll.
The 2014-15 Wildcats are the easier omission to explain. As Norlander noted, the championship matters in a conversation like this, and that team’s run ended one step short. Still, it was painfully close to a historic finish.
“Had Kentucky defeated Wisconsin in the Final Four and then gone on to beat Duke in that title game in Indy in 2015,” wrote Norlander. “We wouldn’t have even asked this question because there would be no debate on who the best team of the 21st century was/is. A 40-0 squad would be regarded as the best since the 1970s, if not the best in history.”
The 2011-12 team has a stronger case than its poll finish suggests. Kentucky had seven future NBA players on that roster, including the top two picks in the 2012 NBA Draft.
One of its two losses came on a buzzer-beater against Indiana, a defeat that still sticks with that fan base. In the NCAA Tournament, the Wildcats rolled through the bracket, knocked off archrival Louisville in the Final Four and beat Kansas for the title.
KenPom ranked that team in the top seven nationally on both offense and defense.
Last season’s Michigan team may have impressed the coaches, but Kentucky’s best teams still belong in the conversation.
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