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With the NBA’s rule on “one-and-done” players, resulting in elite high school basketball recruits often playing just a single year of college basketball, it’s become more difficult than ever for coaches to build programs that consistently win each year. You don’t have to look further than John Calipari’s Kentucky program to see the result – a team can win the NCAA title one year and fail to even make the tournament the next year.
While fans often see reaching the NCAA Tournament as more of a right than a privilege, the reality is that it is very, very hard to be selected year in and year out. Top-notch programs like the aforementioned UK, UConn, North Carolina and UCLA have all recently missed the Big Dance. In fact, there are only five programs across the country which have made more than 10 NCAA tournaments in a row.
We put together a list of the programs with at least five consecutive NCAA appearances. Not surprisingly, the Big Ten and the (former) Big East had three representatives apiece. But it’s Kansas, the pride of Big 12 college basketball, leading the way in terms of consistency. And this isn’t the first time we’ve found a similar result.
T-9th: Missouri, Ohio State, Syracuse (5 straight appearances)
8th: Temple (6 straight appearances)
7th: Louisville (7 straight appearances)
6th: Marquette (8 straight appearances)
T-4th: Wisconsin, Gonzaga (15 straight appearances)
3rd: Michigan State (16 straight appearances)
2nd: Duke (18 straight appearances)
1st: Kansas (24 straight appearances)
For reference, the programs that dropped off this list are: Texas (14 straight until 2013), Xavier (7 straight), BYU (6 straight), Purdue (6 straight) and West Virginia (5 straight).