Arizona basketball: Wildcats ranked 8th on AP’s all-time programs list

The Associated Press has been celebrating its 100th year of existence all year, and the latest rankings list they came out with is the top 100 college basketball programs.

To get their released rankings, the AP looked at how many polls teams have appeared in over the years (plus how many times teams were ranked No. 1), and the Arizona Wildcats came up with an 8th-place ranking all-time.

Here’s how the entire top ten looks:

1. Kentucky Wildcats
2. North Carolina Tar Heels
3. Duke Blue Devils
4. UCLA Bruins
5. Kansas Jayhawks
6. Indiana Hoosiers
7. Louisville Cardinals
8. Arizona Wildcats
9. Syracuse Orange
10. Cincinnati Bearcats

Arizona’s best decade was the 1990s, where they were unranked in only one (!) poll over those ten years. Only the 1970s UCLA Bruins did better, being ranked in every single one of those polls in that particular decade.

The Wildcats are also the only team in the top nine that spent an entire decade outside of the polls. In fact, Arizona was never ranked from the 1951-52 season all the way until the 73-74 season.

Syracuse and Arizona are the only teams in the top ten to win just one National Championship. The Orange’s only championship run came in 2003 with Carmelo Anthony. Cincinnati won back-to-back titles in 1961 and 1962, which has allowed for them to be the top “mid-major” school in this particular ranking.

What do you think of where Arizona ended up? Was it higher, lower, or right about where you expected?