Bill Walton, Coach John Wooden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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” tell me I should write a book about the greatest college players of all time. Since I had played and coached in college for 12 years I could offer a unique view point, they said. I began watching college basketball back in the 1950s, and in my 79-year lifetime I have seen thousands of players. But, as I told them, I spent over 10 months researching and analyzing players for my book, and I had help with the statistics. The thought of doing all of that again, and on a bigger scale, was just not appealing to me. But with the basketball world focused on the March Madness and the Final Four I thought it might be fun to come up with a top 10 player list to go along with my top 10 team list that I posted last week. In my book I developed and defined the 10 criterion that guided me through my selection, and the order of the players in my top 75. My GOAT (greatest of all time) was the player that I felt excelled the most in the criteria I used. I am approaching the college players ranking using some of the same criteria; dominance during the era they played, honors, such POY (player of year), All-American awards, championships, and winning. Here is my list in order.

1. Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), 1967-70, UCLA, Team Record: 78-2, 3xNCAA Champion, 3xAll-American, 2xPOY, Career Average: 26 points,15.5 rebounds
2. Bill Walton, 1971-74, UCLA, Team Record: 86-4, 2xNCAA Champion, 3xAll-American, 2xPOY, Career Average: 20.1 points, 16 rebounds
3. Ralph Sampson, 1979-83, Virginia, Team Record: 112-23, 3xAll-American, 3xPOY, Career Average: 15.5 points, 15.7 rebounds
4. Jerry Lucas, 1959-62, Ohio State, Team Record: 72-6, 1xNCAA Champion, 3xAll-American, 1xPOY, Career Average: 26.5 points, 17.2 rebounds
5. Christian Laettner, 1988-92, Duke, Team Record: 123-26, 2xNCAA Champion, 2xAll-American, 2xPOY, Career Average: 16.6 points, 8 rebounds
6. Bill Russell, 1953-56, San Francisco, Team Record: 69-8, 2xNCAA Champion, 2xAll-American, 2xPOY, Career average: 20 points, 20.5 rebounds
7. Oscar Robertson, 1957-60, Cincinnati, Team Record: 79-9, 3xAll-American, 3xPOY, Career Average: 33 points, 15 rebounds
8. David Thompson, 1972-75, NCST, Team Record: 79-7, 3xAll-American, 1xPOY, Career Average: 27 points, 8.2 rebounds
9. Larry Bird, 1976-79, Indiana St., Team Record: 81-13, 2xAll-American, 1xPOY, Career Average: 30.3 points, 13.3 rebounds
10. George Mikan, 1942-46, DePaul, Team Record: 62-12, 3xAll-American, 2xPOY, NIT Championship in 1945 (NIT was a bigger more prestigious tournament until the 1950s than the NCAA), Career Average: 23 points (led nation in scoring two years) The goal tending rule was changed because of Mikan.

I know there are some VERY noticeable omissions from my list but let me remind you that my criteria for these picks was based on their COLLEGE careers. I do not think that any player that played only one or two years in college deserved to be above the players I selected. Perhaps the most obvious omission is Pete Maravich. “Pistol Pete” is a generational player and one of my five most entertaining players to ever play the game. He still holds the record for the most career points (men) with 3,667, an average of 44.2. He was a 3xAll-American but his LSU teams were 49-35 and did not even win a conference championship. Unlike his counter part on the women’s side, Caitlin Clark, who recently passed Maravich as the all-time scorer in college basketball, her Iowa teams have been to two Final Fours including runner-up in 2023. (Iowa is in the Final Four again.)