NCAA basketball: Ranking every national champion this century: Is Baylor the best?

14. UConn Huskies, 2004

Final Record: 33-6 | Def. Georgia Tech 82-73

Looking at how the 2004 UConn Huskies played in both the Big East Tournament and then the NCAA Tournament, it’s actually a bit shocking that they lost six games on the year — though it should be noted that two of those losses came against top-10 teams in the country and another came early in the year against the Georgia Tech team that eventually made it to the title game.

Led by Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon, with some help from freshman Charlie Villanueva and several other greats of the program, the Huskies came off a regular-season ending loss to Syracuse inspired and ran through the Big East Tournament, culminating with a win over a top-10 Pitt team that had beaten them in the regular season on the road.

That earned the preseason No. 1 team in the country a No. 2-seed in March Madness and weren’t threatened en route to the Final Four with four double-digit victories. The national semifinal against Duke was a different story, though, as they met up with J.J. Redick, Luol Deng and a favored Blue Devils team. Despite a big scare, they overcame a late deficit to get the win.

It was all gravy from there as they were able to pretty convincingly dispatch Georgia Tech to cut down the nets. Their run to the title was undoubtedly impressive but you have to dock this UConn group simply because it feels as if they left some meat on the bone in terms of how good their overall season could’ve been given their talent.