10 most underrated college basketball programs of all time

NCAA basketball: 10 most underrated college basketball programs of all time

SOUTH BEND, IN - FEBRUARY 1974: Head coach Digger Phelps of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish talks to players on the bench during a college basketball game against the Marquette Warriors at Notre Dame in February 1974 in South Bend, Indiana. (Photo by George Gojkovich/Getty Images) /

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CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – MARCH 13: Head coach Mike Brey of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish looks on against the Louisville Cardinals during their game in the second round of the 2019 Men’s ACC Basketball Tournament at Spectrum Center on March 13, 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images) /

These 10 college basketball programs don’t get nearly enough praise for the amount of success they have had over the years. They’re criminally underrated.

When it comes to college basketball lore, basketball fans hear all the usual suspects: Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, and so on. These programs have all accomplished a ton over their histories, but college basketball does take place outside of the blue blood schools.

College hoops feature over 350 Division I programs, and while not everyone can be a Duke or Kentucky there are plenty of schools with a storied basketball history of their own. We recently broke down the top 20 blue blood programs in the country by looking at their track records, and today we’re doing something a little bit different.

Using the same criteria we did to rank the blue bloods, we will break down 10 of the nation’s most underrated programs in the country. Some of these schools have won national championships while others have been NCAA Tournament fixtures, but they don’t receive the same acclaim as the big boys do.

Let’s start our list with a relatively unheralded program that moved up from the Missouri Valley Conference to the Big East, the Creighton Bluejays.