The 10 Best College Basketball Players of All Time

After I published my book in 2022, "The G.O.A.T.: The Quest to Find the Best", about the 75 best basketball players of all time, I had several "friends" telling me I should write a book about the greatest college basketball players of all time. After all, they said, I had coached in college for 12 years and been involved in collegiate sports in some way or another for most of my 79-year life. It is true I have seen thousands of players play, all of them on this list of my top 10, except one. I spent over 10 months researching and analyzing players for The GOAT book, so I wasn't ready to dive right into another book. But based on my history and the "eye test", I thought it would be fun to produce a list of only 10 players that I consider the best to ever play basketball in college.

In my book I developed 10 criteria that guided me to construct my Top 75 list and ultimately pick my one "greatest of all time". I am approaching this the same way; I don't want to just give an opinion that is really not worth much. So, my top 10 college choices are based on: 1) dominance during their era 2) honors, such as All-American 3) championships 4) winning.

I must make one disclaimer: Pete Maravich is a generational college player, who many basketball pundits would consider one of the greatest college basketball players of all time. I would not disagree with them. He still holds the record for most points ever scored by a college basketball player. He averaged 44.2 points per game for a CAREER. He was 3x All-American. BUT his LSU teams were 49-35 and did not even win a conference championship.

My list in order of how I rate them:

L/R: Bill Walton, Coach John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#1 — Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar)

, 1967–70, UCLA
Team Record: 78-2  |  3x NCAA Champion  |  3x All-American  |  2x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 26.0 pts, 15.5 reb

#2 — Bill Walton

, 1971–74, UCLA
Team Record: 86-4  |  2x NCAA Champion  |  3x All-American  |  2x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 20.1 pts, 16.0 reb

#3 — Ralph Sampson

, 1979–83, Virginia
Team Record: 112-23  |  3x All-American  |  3x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 15.5 pts, 15.7 reb

#4 — Jerry Lucas

, 1959–62, Ohio State
Team Record: 72-6  |  1x NCAA Champion  |  3x All-American  |  1x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 26.5 pts, 17.2 reb

#5 — Christian Laettner

, 1988–92, Duke
Team Record: 123-26  |  2x NCAA Champion  |  2x All-American  |  1x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 16.6 pts, 8.0 reb

#6 — Bill Russell

, 1953–56, San Francisco
Team Record: 69-8  |  2x NCAA Champion  |  2x All-American
Career Averages: 20.1 pts, 20.5 reb

#7 — Oscar Robertson

, 1957–60, Cincinnati
Team Record: 79-9  |  3x All-American  |  3x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 33.0 pts, 15.0 reb

#8 — David Thompson

, 1972–75, NC State
Team Record: 79-7  |  1x NCAA Champion  |  3x All-American  |  1x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 27.0 pts, 8.2 reb

#9 — Larry Bird

, 1976–79, Indiana State
Team Record: 81-13  |  2x All-American  |  1x Player of the Year
Career Averages: 30.3 pts, 13.3 reb

#10 — George Mikan

, 1942–46, DePaul
Team Record: 62-12  |  3x All-American  |  2x Player of the Year  |  NIT Championship 1945 (At this time the NIT was a bigger and better tournament than the NCAA.)
Career Averages: 23.0 pts (led nation in scoring two years; NCAA did not keep rebounds)
*Basketball changed the goaltending rule because of Mikan.

It is always difficult to pick "the best" ever of any sport, and I know there are some very deserving players that I left off of my list. But based on my criteria I don't know who I would remove to add someone else. The only player on this list that I did not see play was George Mikan.