NCAA basketball: 25 best college basketball teams of all time

6. 1995-1996 Kentucky Wildcats

It shouldn’t come as a surprise to see yet another Kentucky Wildcats team make the list. There have been a lot of tremendous squads in the history of Kentucky basketball, but none was as brilliant as the 1995-96 edition.

There may not have been a greater collection of talent ever assembled at Kentucky than the one Rick Pitino put together that year. A group that became known as “The Untouchables” featured a whopping nine future NBA players, including Antoine Walker, Tony Delk and Nazr Mohammed.

The Wildcats made swift work of the SEC in the regular season, going 26-1 overall and a perfect 16-0 in conference play. The group surprisingly didn’t add an SEC Tournament title to their trophy case, losing by 11 to Mississippi State in the championship game.

That loss was a wakeup call for Kentucky, which steamrolled through the first four rounds of the NCAA Tournament to reach the Final Four. The group was tested stiffly in East Rutherford, first taking down Marcus Camby and UMass before beating Syracuse by nine to claim the national championship.

Delk, Walker and Walter McCarthy were all first round picks in that June’s NBA Draft, with Delk just missing the lottery after winning the Final Four’s Most Outstanding Player award. Even though there have been plenty of great Kentucky teams over the years, few will argue that the 1995-96 Wildcats weren’t the best to ever take the floor at Rupp Arena.