25 YEARS OF THE AP TOP 25

[Fieldhouse Flyer]

The Top 25 (And 1) biggest stories in men's college basketball since 2000  - Matt Norlander, CBS Sports - July 24, 2025

The players, coaches, games, moments and off-the-court stories that had the greatest impact in college hoops in the past 25 years

Over the past 25 years, dozens of stories and moments have significantly added to the lore of men's college basketball. In that span, the sport has witnessed some of its greatest coaches win championships and, inevitably, end their careers. It's seen some teenagers enter into its arenas and leave college as bona fide legends.

Beyond the individual figures, the contours and definitions of what constitutes what college basketball is has drastically changed from what we knew it to be 25 years ago. The NBA-initiated one-and-done era was born in the past quarter-century. The NCAA Tournament expanded twice. The rules regarding transfers and how coaches are allowed to recruit have been rewritten a dozen times. Biggest of all, the amateurism model that existed for more than 100 years was finally undone.

There's been so much that has happened to this great game over the past two and a half decades.

And because I simply can't help myself, with this being the year 2025, I decided to whittle down the 25 — well, no, actually, I couldn't even do that. It's the Top 25 (And 1) biggest stories in the sport since 2000. Hop in the time machine with me as we scan back over the past 25 years in men's college hoop.

Realignment has always been a thing in college sports, with teams switching leagues for basically 100 years. One move begets another and another. Some decisions are much more significant than others.

In 2004, Miami and Virginia Tech left the Big East for football reasons, and in doing so set in motion the major fissures that would come later in the 21st century. A funny line from The New York Times on June 30, 2003: "The addition of Miami and Virginia Tech could transform the A.C.C., best known for its top basketball programs, into a football powerhouse."

We know how that turned out.

Back in the early 2000s, the Big East tried to sue to block the action and failed. Then-Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese was quoted at the time: "I think the public is disgusted with us all to be honest with you."

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25. Villanova coach Jay Wright retires (April 20, 2022)

There have been a number of notable retirements since 2000, but the shock value and symbolism of Wright's outpaces all others. At 60 years old, coming off the fourth Final Four of his career and still operating in his prime at Villanova, Wright decided the grind was no longer for him. He saw the first season of NIL-affected college basketball and didn't want any more of it. (Tony Bennett would retire for similar reasons in October 2024.)

Wright won 642 games, two national championships, 13 combined Big East titles, was a two-time Naismith Coach of the Year and six-time Big East Coach of the Year. It all led to a Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame induction in 2021. Wright quickly pivoted to television work, where he's predictably been terrific and figures to grow into one of the game's most prominent voices on the media side.


19. Brad Stevens leaves Butler for the Celtics (July 3, 2013)

A few of these stories make the list because of their shock value, and this one absolutely qualifies. On the day before the Fourth of July, just after 5:30 p.m. ET, Butler and the Boston Celtics jointly announced that 36-year-old Brad Stevens would be taking the Celtics job. It was in no way hinted at before that moment. A stunning news dump heading into a four-day holiday weekend.

Stevens had been attached to previous openings in college, but he never actually engaged in any discussions about leaving Butler. He went 166-49 with BU, including a 12-5 record in the NCAAs and two title game appearances (keep scrolling). His 166 wins is the most for any NCAA Division I basketball coach over the first six years to start a career.

In a testament to how coveted he was, Stevens' Butler contract in 2013, when he took the Boston job, lasted all the way until this year, 2025.

Because of Stevens, Butler went from Horizon League to A-10 to the Big East. He holds an distinct legacy in the college game.

College hoops was worse off for not having Stevens in it, as was Butler. But Stevens did OK for himself, winning way more often than not in eight seasons as an NBA coach, before stunning again by leaving coaching to run the Celtics' front office. He was rewarded there, winning NBA Executive of the Year in 2023-24, when the Celtics won the NBA title.


15. UConn dominantly goes back-to-back, ascends to blue blood status (2023, 2024)

Back-to-back listings for back-to-back championship winners. UConn edges out Florida for the record-setting nature of the Huskies' struts to their natties.

The Kemba Walker-led Huskies team that won it all in 2011 was in strong consideration for this list but wound up being one of the final cuts.

Truth be told, UConn's got a bigger story this century anyway.

In 2023, Dan Hurley's program went 31-8 and won the title as a No. 4 seed, but it never lost to nonconference competition that season and won its six tournament games by an average of 20 points. In the final four games of that tourney, UConn held all its opponents under 35% shooting, which had never been done. That group also trailed for a total of 55 seconds in the six second halves of that tournament.

Outlandish.

The 2023-24 team was even better.

That group went 37-3 and has a strong case as a top-three team this century. It beat opponents by 23.3 points in the NCAAs, never trailed in the second half and had a point differential of +140, the highest in NCAA history. It added up to two titles with 12 straight games of 13-plus point victories. It validated UConn, permanently, as a blue blood — giving the school its fifth and sixth championships in a 26-year span. It also vaulted Hurley to face-of-the-sport status, where his perch remains.

Certain programs winning titles under certain circumstances wind up carrying more narrative weight. UConn's destruction of the tournament two years in a row is a level of supremacy we may never see again.


11. Kris Jenkins wins it at the buzzer for Villanova over UNC in the national title game (April 4, 2016)

Huge moments and huge stories aren't the same thing, but sometimes a moment is so big it becomes a story unto itself. Jenkins hitting that shot in Houston is one of the three biggest moments in college hoops this century, and thus elevates to one of the biggest stories. His name is forever. That shot will play until the sun swallows the earth. It was a privilege to be in the building to witness the greatest ending in college basketball history.

Ryan Arcidiacono took six dribbles, tossed it off to Jenkins, who was ready and unleashed a parabola that provided one of the more memorable moments in American sports of the past 25 years. 

The winning play was aptly named "Nova."

University of North Carolina vs Villanova University, 2016 NCAA National Championship
Kris Jenkins shot himself into American sports lore with his winner in 2016 over UNC. Getty Images
It was the first true buzzer-beating shot ever in a championship game (Dereck Whittenberg's airball falling into Lorenzo Charles' hands technically doesn't qualify). The buzzer-beater was huge for Villanova and for the Big East in the league's reconstruction after conference realignment.

To make the ending even better, Marcus Paige's circus 3-pointer the play before is on the short list of most incredible plays in a losing effort in college sports history. But also: the play produced one of the coldest reactions ever to a game-winning result.


10. Huge conference realignment leads to Catholic 7, near death and ultimate restructuring of Big East (2010-13)

It's when college football redrew the map of college basketball forever.

First: Over a 48-hour span in the summer of 2010, Colorado left the Big 12 for the Pac-10 and Nebraska left the Big 12 for the Big Ten. Those were the dominoes that set into action movement that redefined the assembly of college sports than a decade later.

At one point, the Pac-12 tried to convince Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to leave the Big 12, and it would have happened if not for Texas saying no. In the process, the Big 12 nearly died. (The irony: The Pac-12 would fall victim to near-dissolution more than a decade later when the Big Ten took its four most important schools.)

The shuffling included Utah joining the Pac-10 (and creating the Pac-12). Texas A&M and Missouri left the Big 12 for the SEC. The Big 12 salvaged itself by bringing in TCU and West Virginia. Maryland turned its back on the ACC and Rutgers headed to the Big Ten, all in the name of not just TV money, but specifically, the promise of cable TV money.

No league underwent a more dramatic metamorphosis than the Big East, which tried to bring in TCU and Memphis at different points — to bolster football — only to see football greed nearly destroy the conference. West Virginia, Syracuse, Notre Dame and Pitt all left for the ACC, while football-playing Big East schools rebranded as the American: UConn, Louisville, Cincinnati, Rutgers (for one year), South Florida.

The Catholic 7 (Villanova, Providence, St. John's, Seton Hall, Georgetown, Marquette and DePaul) managed to hold on to the Big East branding and recruited Creighton, Butler and Xavier into the league, stabilizing the best basketball-first conference in college basketball. The league has had four teams in its ranks win a national title since, earned an average of five NCAA Tournament bids and in seven of 12 seasons it has ranked either second or third in conference strength at KenPom.

The realignment earthquake of the 2020s was huge, but it was the tectonic action of the early 2010s that redrew the map and enabled conferences, school presidents and TV networks to abandon the concept of geography being a central tenant of conference construction. Those decisions made 16- and 18-team superconferences possible approximately a decade later.


5. The Greatest Shot That Never Was: Gordon Hayward almost beats Duke and Butler makes back-to-back title games (2010, 2011)

How large must a moment be for a shot that didn't even go in to become one of the undying highlights in a sport's history? In a blink, Gordon Hayward's 45-foot prayer from a 30-degree angle that smacked off the glass and rolled off the rim after time expired on April 5, 2010 made millions blip into an alternate reality. Another universe where a mid-major from the Horizon League managed to win a national championship over the most popular blue blood in college basketball.

Instead, Duke won 61-59 in the first title game decided by a bucket in more than two decades. Seriously, go to about the three-minute mark of the second half and tap back into the tension of this title game. Butler had the game on its racquet.


Butler was a 33-win 5-seed heading into that title game, coached by then-33-year-old Brad Stevens, who was in his third season on the job. That was the best Butler team in history, with the No. 7 per-possession defense, a future top-10 in Hayward and program legends such as Shelvin Mack and Matt Howard playing alongside. Butler rode a 25-game winning streak into that Monday night. Duke was the No. 1 at KenPom that season, led by Kyle Singler, Jon Scheyer, Nolan Smith and Brian Zoubek.

The championship game run was made all the more special because it was staged in Indianapolis — just miles away from Butler's campus. It was the smallest school (enrollment all of 4,200 then) to make the Final Four in 30-plus years.

The next year, Butler was as a No. 8 seed and still made it all the way back to the final night. It escaped a wild first NCAA tourney weekend with grinders against Old Dominion and Pitt. In the Sweet 16, Stevens' team knocked off Wisconsin before edging Florida in OT in the Elite Eight. In 2011 it was Butler that was responsible for ending VCU's Final Four run, then got handled 53-41 by UConn (giving the Kemba storyline long-lasting power) in objectively the worst title game in modern history.

But for a mid-major to make back-to-back title games? That is astounding. I truly don't think we'll ever see it happen again, and that's why it ranks so highly here.


2. COVID cancels the 2020 NCAA Tournament (March 12, 2020)

When one of the biggest sporting events on the calendar is not held for the first time in its 80-plus-year history due to a global pandemic that puts the world in a vice grip, that's an all-time story.

Every American team sport, at some point, some way, found a path to stage a championship event in 2020 ... with the exception of college basketball. No March Madness for the first time since the tournament began in 1939. It's still a bother that 2020 has his void that will never be filled in, all because COVID-19 hit America soil with an increasingly aggressive wave just as the selection committee was meeting to build out the bracket.

The NBA's season was postponed the night of March 11, 2020, and that was the signal to the country that everything was about to change in a major way. It took less than 18 hours for the NCAA to make the call and do the inevitable. If you're interested to go back and read about what it was like, I wrote a tick-tock account just days after the tournament was killed.

Without a tournament to figure out a champion, fans of three schools in particular (that don't have NCAA titles) are left to wonder what could have been. Gonzaga (31-2), Dayton (29-2) and San Diego State (30-2) all had realistic hopes to be national champions that season. And it was all taken away. Fortunately, a bubble tournament was salvaged in 2021 before things were restored to normalcy in 2022.


1. Ed O'Bannon v. NCAA begins the inevitable: Transfer portal, NIL legislation and revenue-sharing ends century-old amateurism model (2009-present)

NCAA-affiliated lawsuits are so common these days, they're practically expected on a weekly basis. But in July 2009, the most important lawsuit in college athletics history was filed. Former UCLA All-American basketball player Ed O'Bannon sued the NCAA over an antitrust violation that stemmed from the NCAA and EA Sports using his likeness in a video game — and profiting — without his consent.

He was one of thousands.

It was morally indefensible, and the NCAA was finally going to pay for it.

The case took plenty of turns and stalls, ultimately requiring five years to move through the courts. O'Bannon eventually won in 2014. The NCAA appealed. More lawsuits came. The NCAA spent more than $100 million in legal costs and lobbying efforts over more than a decade's time to restrict the earning capacity of college athletes. What a waste.

In 2021, the NCAA's amateurism model was delivered another huge blow when the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the plaintiffs in the infamous Alston case. States passed laws that were player-friendly and protected them from action by the NCAA, empowering NIL legislation. That dovetailed with loosening of transfer rules, which prompted an era of transactional roster movement that sent college sports into chaos.

Has it all been for the better? No. But evolution is messy, and this is the most crucial period in NCAA history. Because for the first time, truly, players' rights matter. That set the stage for the House case, which led to the House case settlement, revenue sharing and where we are here, in July of 2025. The NCAA has been forced to change its philosophy, to bend on what it allows and what it stands for on a fundamental level. Because of it, there is no bigger story. O'Bannon v. NCAA started the slow death of amateurism and had a profound impact on all of college sports.

And still this story is not finished and in many ways won't be until college athletes can unionize and collectively bargain.

Whenever that day comes, it will be as big of a story as this one, as it's the last great frontier in college sports.

[wadesworld]

If anybody is interested they will go to CBS Sports. No need to copy and paste an article here.

[Uncle Rico]

..................................

Dayton sucks

[brewcity77]

Can the mods please ban this guy already? He's just a bad parody of himself.