By Larry Smith - Co-Host & Executive Producer, IlliniGuys Sports Spectacular
March 9, 2024
(Cover photo courtesy Associated Press)
We spend a lot of time these days talking about the massive shift in college football that's coming this summer as the Big 10, SEC, ACC, and Big 12 expand and the Pac-12 shrinks into near oblivion. But change in college basketball has been in the making for a while.
There are six blueblood schools that have ruled the game: UCLA, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, and Indiana. From the launch of the NCAA tournament in 1939 until 2012, they combined to dominate with 36 national championships and 86 Final Four appearances. They won the most, they recruited the best, and they had the biggest names. Allen, Knight, Krzyzewski, McCracken, Rupp, Smith, Williams, Wooden...Alcindor, Alford, Hansbrough, Jordan, Laettner, Thomas, Walton... just to name a few.
They were so dominant that, in the nearly half-century between 1963 and 2012, there were only four years in which none of them appeared in the Final Four. If it was April, one of them was stealing the spotlight, whether they won it all or not.