WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Here in the arena where the home team has already been demoted from No. 1 twice this season, it seemed a good place for the subject of the day: What does history say about the importance of being at the top of the college basketball polls?
Hint: Not as much as you might think.
Arizona is No. 1 this week for the Associated Press. Purdue was there last week, before coming down with a killer case of the Iowa State flu. Houston stopped by the top in mid-November and Purdue before that on opening day. So there have been three changes already this season, still with 14 shopping days until Christmas. There were three changes all last season involving four teams, none of them named Florida, who ended up winning the national championship.
RANKINGS: Check out the latest men’s basketball AP Top 25
And that’s the thing about this No. 1 business. For all the buzz the moniker gets, especially whenever its current occupant loses (think court storming), the historical power of the penthouse is marginal at best come March. Only two of the past 23 champions were the top-ranked team going into the NCAA Tournament — Connecticut in 2024 and Kentucky in 2012. Only 18 of the past 48 champions were ranked No. 1 at any point in their title season. UConn owns four of the past 14 championships and three of those Huskies were not No. 1 a single week during the season.
Arizona should understand all this. Oh, the current No. 1 ranking is swell enough. “Obviously it’s nothing you shy away from,” coach Tommy Lloyd told the AP this week. “You’re at Arizona. The big stage. It’s part of being at a program like this. But we have bigger things on our mind.” Indeed, the most famous Wildcats of them all were ranked No. 15 when the 1997 NCAA tournament began, and they finished by cutting down the nets. That Arizona team never got higher than sixth all season, but nearly 29 years later, remains the last school from the West to win the title.
Purdue has been No. 1 seven different occasions in the past five seasons, making Matt Painter something of an expert on coming and going at the top, and what that means, if anything. Let him have the floor.
“I didn’t walk away from the Iowa State game and say, well, we’re not No. 1 anymore. I walked away from the Iowa State game saying we got our ass kicked and how could I let that happen?,” he said of the historic 81-58 shellacking by the Cyclones. “That’s kind of the downside to coaching. You can go 34-5 and you sit around thinking about those five losses. It makes you miserable. You’re like, why do you choose this profession?
“Those losses, they sit on you (but) it’s actually a really good thing. There’s a part of you that has to be a little bit miserable because that’s your job not to let it happen again.”
RECAP: The historic numbers behind No. 1 Purdue’s loss to Iowa State
It certainly didn’t happen again Wednesday night. The Boilermakers threw a 29-2 run at Minnesota the first 10 minutes of the second half and rolled 85-57. This week’s discounted No. 6 ranking fit Purdue just fine.
“Being No. 1 really isn’t that important,” Painter said. “Being a No. 1 seed is, in the tournament, there’s nothing wrong with that being a goal, but it’s also having 1 next to your name in March. Like, 1 next to your name in October, November, December, who really cares? It’s not that big a deal.”
Some other essentials when it comes to life with, and without, the No. 1 ranking:
Going wire to wire all season at No. 1 and then winning the national championship has become a rare historical artifact, at least since the Wooden Age. John Wooden did it four times at UCLA, but the last team to pull it off was Duke 34 years ago. Others have come famously close lately. Gonzaga made it as far as the championship game in 2021 and Kentucky to the Final Four in 2015. Defeat and disappointment awaited both.
The most common number of changes lately at the top in any given regular season has been six. That happened in 2024, ’23 and ’22. The most volatile recent season was 2019-20, when the No. 1 spot was passed around the table like a basket of dinner rolls. Michigan State started there and lasted a week, then Kentucky a week, then Duke for two weeks, then Louisville for two weeks, then Kansas for a week, then Gonzaga, Baylor and Kansas again. We’ll never know what all that meant in the end because the NCAA tournament was aborted by the pandemic.
Turned out the 1980s was prime time for champions who never got close enough to No. 1 to smell it. Kansas started at No. 7 in the preseason in 1987-88, quickly took an elevator down the polls and was unranked the final eight weeks. Villanova 1984-85 was ranked only six of 17 weeks, never higher than 14th, before stunning Georgetown in its famous title game. NC State, the survive-and-advance story for the ages in 1983, was never higher than 15th in the AP poll and entered the tournament No. 16.
If No. 1 is not especially relevant to championship hopes, what is? Being ranked in the top 12. When? Now. This week is the sixth AP poll of the season, everyone having settled in, and teams in the top 12 in the sixth week have won 21 national championships in a row and 35 of the past 36. Syracuse of 2003, unranked until mid-January, is the lone exception. For the record, Florida was No. 9 in the sixth week last season.
So keep this dozen in mind for your bracket in three months: Arizona, Michigan, Duke, Iowa State, Connecticut, Purdue, Houston, Gonzaga, Michigan State, BYU, Louisville and Alabama. Six of those have never won a national title — Iowa State, Purdue, Houston, Gonzaga, BYU and Alabama. Michigan State, Arizona and Michigan haven’t won a championship in at least 26 years. But they all have recent precedence on their side.
Sorry No. 13 Illinois. History says you’re on the wrong side of the bubble. You, too, North Carolina, Kansas and defending champion Florida. Never mind the chant “We’re No. 1!” Probably won’t matter in March. This might: We’re No. 12!
