March Madness: Ranking every national champion from this century

9. Syracuse (2003)

Buried amid schools like Duke, North Carolina, UConn and Villanova ruling the college basketball landscape, Syracuse marched to their only title of the 2000s. It’s somewhat surprising, with how well head coach Jim Boeheim has recruited, but this was his only highlight of the millennium.

Still, it’s easy to forget that a Carmelo Anthony-led team won a National Championship. He was a perennial star in the NBA but had the reputation for never making the conference finals.

Boeheim only used eight players, so the talent pool was relatively limited that made an impact, but it was a strong, top-heavy group that had Anthony, Hakim Warrick and Gerry McNamara as the main players. There was the quintessential star, the interior presence, and the outside shooter.

This group was only a No. 3 seed, but in a region that had teams grouped in the five-to-nine loss range, from No. 1 to No. 8. They were close which created some parity.

The road to the Elite Eight was not the toughest, though, as it took two double-digit seed teams to get there and No. 6 Oklahoma State. Although they had to defeat consecutive No. 1 teams to reach the National Championship Game — benefiting their overall resume.

To top it off, Syracuse had to overcome a Roy Williams-led team in Kansas, who was not exactly absent of talent, with Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich, Keith Langford and Wayne Simien all averaging 14.8 points per game and above.