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Imagine how great the first two quintets of the Sporting News all-time All-Americans – chosen in celebration of our 140-year anniversary – must have been for Michael Jordan to miss the cut.
No, this isn’t Michael Jordan with a golf club in his hand.
This is MJ the basketball player.
OK, he wasn’t truly MJ just yet, but he was pretty great.
And there were (at least) 10 players in the history of the sport who were better as collegians. They include players who averaged 30 (or 40) points. They include multi-time NCAA champions. There’s one who was part of an 88-game winning streak, basically 2½ seasons without a defeat.
Those who played in an era where dunking was outlawed kept slamming the opposition in other ways. Those who played when freshmen weren’t permitted to compete stuffed four seasons’ worth of greatness into three years. Those who played when there was no such thing as a 3-pointer shot from long range, anyway, took their points and moved on.
The sport of college basketball has changed so much over the decades.
We at Sporting News, though, still know a great player when we see one.
DECOURCY: As my retirement approaches, here's my top 10 Final Four memories
Sporting News All-Time All-America Team
First Team
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, UCLA
Position: Center
Career stats: 26.4 ppg, 15.5 rpg, .639 FG pct.
Individual honors: USBWA Player of the Year (1967, 1968); Sporting News Player of the Year (1967, 1969)
Team honors: NCAA Champions (1967, 1968, 1969)
Overview: In the summer of 2002, I was working on a book for Sporting News about the top 100 players in college basketball history that we called, “Legends of College Basketball”. On the recruiting circuit, I’d run into coaches I knew, and often they’d ask how I was spending my offseason. I’d tell them about the book. And nearly every one responded: “Who’s No. 2 behind Kareem?”
Abdul-Jabbar was a sensation from the moment he walked onto UCLA’s campus, even though he – like every freshman then -- wasn’t eligible to compete for an entire year. It was worth the wait. He scored 56 in his opening game, in a 105-90 victory against USC, and his dominance continued through three championships in three seasons including 37 points and 20 rebounds in a 20-point destruction of Rick Mount’s Purdue Boilermakers in Kareem’s final college game.
Kareem was plenty tall, but he’s at the heart of the shortest argument in all of sports: Who is the greatest college basketball player of them all?
Oscar Robertson, Cincinnati
Position: Guard
Career stats: 33.8 ppg, 15.2 rpg, .535 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1958, 1959, 1960), USBWA Player of the Year (1959, 1960)
Team honors: Final Four (1959, 1960)
Overview: There might never have been a more complete player than Oscar, who was so brilliant that the USBWA trophy he won twice now bears his name. Oscar excelled in all phases of the game, and his achievements are somewhat understated by the fact the assist did not become an official college stat until well after the completion of his career. He is credited with unofficial averages of 6.9 per game as a junior and 7.3 as a senior, and with recording 10 triple-doubles while with the Bearcats.
Cincinnati was 79-9 during his career. He produced six games of 50 points or more, including a personal-best 62. He finished his career as the NCAA’s career scoring leader, with 2,973 points in three seasons. Of the 12 players now ahead of him on the career list, 11 played four seasons to Oscar’s three.
Bill Walton, UCLA
Position: Center
Career stats: 20.3 ppg, 15.7 rpg, .651 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1972, 1973, 1974), USBWA Player of the Year (1972, 1973, 1974).
Team honors: NCAA Champion (1972, 1973); Final Four (1974)
Overview: Walton was at the heart of UCLA’s 88-game winning streak, which may be the most unbreakable record in the sport. He had a curious looking jumpshot but a beautiful touch, and ranked among the best passers ever at his position.
There never has been a better title-game performance than Walton’s 21-of-22 shooting against Memphis in the 1973 NCAA final. That included just enough point-blank lob finishes to create a memory of simple physical domination, even against Tigers greats Larry Kenon and Ronnie Robinson, but a rewatch of the film from that game reveals an abundance of mid-range jumpers, as well. Walton was that skilled.
The teams on which he played finished 86-4, and it took double-overtime against one of the great non-UCLA teams of the era, NC State 1974, to eliminate Walton’s senior-season team. He often talked later in his life about how much that loss haunted him. “I will never be able to erase the stigma, the stain, from my soul,” he said in an HBO documentary. Maybe that’s why he won the other 86.
David Thompson, NC State
Position: Forward
Career stats: 26.8 ppg, 8.1 rpg, .553 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1975), USBWA Player of the Year (1975)
Team honors: NCAA Champion (1974)
Overview: Thompson’s vertical leap once was measured at 44 inches, and it seems years later they must have had a broken ruler. Because we’ve seen players since with verticals listed higher, and maybe some of them ever flew where Thompson could go.
There was more to Thompson’s game than his leaping ability, but it began there because defenses had no real answer for it. That’s how he wound up leading the ACC in free throw attempts as both a junior and senior, and he converted 76 percent for his career. He also was an effective jumpshooter, but there was no 3-point reward at the time, so it made more sense for him to play around the goal (and above the rim).
Although he was just 6-4, 195 pounds, he never averaged fewer than 7.9 rebounds. It took a player with great fortitude to be at the core of a collapsing the UCLA dynasty; the Bruins had won seven consecutive NCAA titles when he and the Wolfpack finally got their chance in the semifinals of the 1974 Tournament. He contributed 21 points, 7 rebounds and 3 steals that day, going 7-of-12 from the field. He wasn’t dominant in that game, but neither was he far from flawless.
Bill Russell, San Francisco
Position: Center
Career stats: 20.7 ppg, 20.3 rpg., .516 FG pct.
Individual honors: United Press International Player of the Year (1956), NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player, 1955
Team honors: NCAA champion (1955, 1956)
Overview: Russell really didn’t know what it felt like to lose. He earned two NCAA championships, an Olympic gold medal and, later on, 11 NBA titles. Russell can be called the greatest defensive player in the college game’s history, and who would be able to argue with that? They weren’t counting shot blocks then, so all we’ve got are the rebounds he gathered and the fact the Dons ranked first in points allowed his junior year and second when he was a senior.
And there are the film clips that show him toying with players who dared to challenge him. In the 1955 NCAA title game, the great Tom Gola went 6-of-15 from the floor against USF. In the next season’s final, Iowa shot 32.9 percent from the floor.
In nine NCAA Tournament games on the way to the two titles, he averaged 23.2 points and 18.3 rebounds. And in the 1956 title game, he unofficially was credited with a 20/20/20 triple-double: 26 points, 27 rebounds, 20 blocks.
MORE: SN's hoops panel ranks greatest college hoops teams of all time
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Second Team
Pete Maravich, LSU
Position: Guard
Career stats: 44.2 ppg, 6.4 rpg, .438 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1970), USBWA Player of the Year (1969, 1970)
Team honors: NIT final four (1970)
Overview: There’s never been a greater magician with the basketball, and that includes the trick of putting it in the goal more than any man in Division I history. Even before the 3-pointer was introduced – and shooting from distance was a huge part of his game – he scored 3,667 points. In three seasons. Antoine Davis scored 3,664 in five years at Detroit Mercy. An amazing achievement, to be sure, but he played 61 more games. If “Pistol Pete” had played that much, he’d have finished with (yikes) 6,360 points.
All the teams on which Maravich played were not great, but in his senior season, the Tigers went 20-8 overall and 13-5 in the SEC, good for a solid second place behind powerhouse Kentucky. But, like the 3-point line and freshman eligibility, Maravich also didn’t get to take advantage of an expanded NCAA Tournament. Only league champs were welcome. The Tigers went to the NIT, where they lost in the semis to a Marquette squad that had declined an NCAA bid.
Elvin Hayes, Houston
Position: Forward
Career stats: 31 ppg, 17.2 rpg, 53.6 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1968), Associated Press Player of the Year (1968)
Team honors: NCAA Final Four (1967, 1968)
Overview: There was a conversation among Turner Sports announcers Stan Van Gundy, Robbie Hummel and Kevin Harlan during the Cougars’ 2026 NCAA Tournament elimination by Illinois: Who was the better Houston Cougar, Hayes or Hakeem Olajuwon.
That’s the easiest debate ever on a sports program. Olajuwon was tremendous. Hayes was whatever is better than tremendous.
Imagine how great a player had to be to earn distinction as Kareem’s archrival? They played twice in the NCAA Tournament, and again in the “Game of the Century” regular season meeting at Houston’s Astrodome. Kareem won two of those three – the two in the NCAAs, which prevented Hayes from winning a title with the Cougars. But Hayes had 25 points and 24 rebounds in one Final Four loss, and 31 points and 17 rebounds in UH’s 71-69 regular season win in 1968.
Larry Bird, Indiana State
Position: Forward
Career stats: 30.3 ppg, 13.3 rpg, 4.6 apg, .532 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1979), USBWA Player of the Year (1979)
Team honors: NCAA Final Four (1979)
Overview: It’s impossible to know what kind of force Indiana basketball might have become following their back-to-back undefeated regular seasons in 1975 and 1976 had Bird remained on campus after enrolling in the fall of 1974. He would have served as the talent bridge between the Scott May/Kent Benson championship team in ’76 and the Isiah Thomas team that won it all in 1981. Indiana might have been looking at its own period of UCLA-style dominance.
Bird ultimately preferred the smaller campus at Indiana State and quickly became a dominant college player, with a scoring total of 2,850 points that still ranks No. 18 on the career list and behind only Maravich, Robertson and Hayes among three-year collegians.
Bird topped 900 points in each of his three seasons with the Sycamores, and he led the nation in scoring in his final season. That year the Sycamores were undefeated in the regular season. In the NCAAs, Bird delivered 29 points in a comfortable victory against Oklahoma, 31 in an Elite Eight victory over Arkansas and wound up one assist short of a triple-double against Mark Aguirre and DePaul in the national semis.
His game against Michigan State in the final was less memorable, but no mid-major program made it back to the title game for the next 30 years, a streak broken by Butler in 2010.
Patrick Ewing, Georgetown
Position: Center
Career stats: 15.3 ppg, 9.2 rpg, 3.4 bpg, .620 FG pct
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1985), Naismith Player of the Year (1985)
Team honors: NCAA champion (1984), NCAA Final Four (1982, 1984, 1985)
Overview: One of college basketball’s ultimate winners, Ewing helped make Georgetown great from the moment he arrived on campus. The Hoyas were 121-23 during his four seasons, 15-3 in the NCAA Tournament.
Known first for his defensive ability, Ewing led the Big East in blocks in each of his four seasons, though the NCAA did not recognize this as an official statistic until after his carer ended. His 493 career blocks would rank No. 4 among those for whom this stat was charted. Ewing scored in double figures in 15 of his 18 career NCAA Tournament games.
Ewing was not about numbers, though, on a team that preferred a controlled pace and defensive dominance. That was how coach John Thompson wanted it, and Ewing was a great reason for that. Every offensive possession spent operating in the halfcourt meant confronting the big man in the middle. Almost every time, it meant the Georgetown opposition was in trouble.
Christian Laettner, Duke
Position: Center
Career stats: 16.6 ppg, 7.8 rpg, .574 FG pct.
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1992), USBWA Player of the Year (1992)
Team honors: NCAA champion (1991, 1992), NCAA Final Four (1989, 1990)
Overview: Laettner was the first player to start in four NCAA Final Fours, a distinction he earned by fighting his way into the lineup alongside star Danny Ferry – and subsequently outplaying more celebrated classmate Alonzo Mourning in their 1989 Elite Eight showdown. Laettner was 9-of-10 from the field that day and scored 24 points, and he also grabbed 9 rebounds. (Mourning finished with 11 and 5).
March Madness came to be Laettner’s personal canvas. There have been only a few buzzer-beating shots to advance teams to the Final Four, and he had two of them: against UConn in 1990, and against Kentucky in 1992. He was twice named to the all-Final Four team, and four times to the NCAA’s all-Regional team.
In a 1992 season that included future Hall of Famers Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning, Laettner was named unanimous Player of the Year.
MORE: Check where Laettner's shot ranks in SN's 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time
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Third Team
Danny Manning, Kansas
Position: Forward
Career stats: 20.1 ppg, 8.1 rpg, 1.9 bpg, .593 FG pct
Individual honors: Naismith Player of the Year (1988), NABC Player of the Year (1988)
Team honors: NCAA champion (1988), NCAA Final Four (1986)
Overview: It’s quite possible no one’s every produced a better single NCAA Tournament than Manning did in 1988, when the Jayhawks entered as a No. 6 seed and took out Vanderbilt (Will Perdue), rival Kansas State (Mitch Richmond), Duke (Danny Ferry) and Oklahoma (Stacey King).
Manning reached the 25-point mark in half of those games and went for 30 twice, including his astonishing 31-point, 18-rebound, 5-steal performance against the Sooners in the title game.
That title wasn’t all he accomplished, though. He was a first-team consensus All-America choice as a junior and senior, and his teams won 13 of their 16 March Madness games.
Jay Williams, Duke
Position: Guard
Career stats: 19.3 ppg, 6.0 apg, .453 FG pct, .393 3-PT
Individual honors: NABC Player of the Year (2001, 2002), Sporting News Player of the Year (2002), USBWA Player of the Year (2002)
Team honors: NCAA champion (2001)
Overview: Williams alternated during his career between point guard and shooting guard but never wavered from being dominant. He topped 21 points on average in each of his final two seasons, and teams genuinely feared being unable to slow him down on offense his final year at Duke.
In a road game at Maryland in the 2001-02 season, Williams was at the heart of the “Miracle Minute” comeback by the Devils, scoring eight points in 53.5 second to help erase a 10-point deficit and force overtime, where Duke defeated the eventual NCAA champions.
Magic Johnson, Michigan State
Position: Guard
Career stats: 17.1 ppg, 7.9 apg, 7.6 rpg
Individual honors: Consensus first-team All-America (1979)
Team honors: NCAA champion (1979)
Overview: Magic only played two years with the Spartans, but those two seasons changed the program for good. He and Greg Kelser led MSU to the program’s second of 10 NCAA Final Fours and first national title.
Magic was a local product from Everett High and stayed home to play for the Spartans, and the genius he brought to the college game was evident immediately. He averaged 17 points and 7.4 assists and was named first-team All-Big Ten his freshman year on an MSU team that won the school’s fourth-ever Big Ten title. As a sophomore, he progressed to first-team All-America and the Spartans won the Big Ten again. In the NCAA final, he scored 24 points, grabbed 7 rebounds and passed for 5 assists. In the national semis against Penn, he recorded an unofficial triple-double – assists still were not official at the time-- of 29 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists.
Michael Jordan, North Carolina
Position: Guard
Career stats: 17.7 ppg, 5.0 rpg, 1.7 spg, .540 FG pct
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (1983, 1984), Oscar Robertson Trophy (1984)
Team honors: NCAA champion (1982)
Overview: As a collegian, Jordan probably is best remembered for the 15-foot, left wing jumper through a gap in the Georgetown zone defense that delivered Dean Smith’s first national title at North Carolina. It was a big shot, the first of many he’d make in a career that would carry him to the very top of the sport.
Perhaps he should be better known, however, as the player so good the Sporting News couldn’t simply ignore his performances and go along with the crowd habitually granting the Player of the Year trophies to Virginia’s Ralph Sampson. By the time he was a senior, Sampson had won all the awards for three years running. Except SN couldn’t ignore that the best player in Sampson’s own league in 1982-83 was MJ.
He averaged 20 points, shot 55 percent from the field, shot 45 percent from the ACC’s too-close experimental 3-point line and led the Heels to a regular-season championship tie with UVa.
Jordan swept the POY awards as a junior the following season.
Tyler Hansbrough, North Carolina
Position: Center
Career stats: 20.2 ppg, 8.6 rpg, .536 FG pct
Individual honors: Sporting News Player of the Year (2008), USBWA Player of the Year (2008)
Team honors: NCAA champion (2009), NCAA Final Four (2008)
Overview: Thanks to the Sporting News, Hansbrough became college basketball’s only four-time first-team All-America selection. We were the only ones to honor him for his phenomenal freshman season, when he averaged 18.8 points, 7.8 rebounds and converted 57 percent of his field goal attempts. With Carolina losing four players from the 2005 champions to the NBA Draft first round, he arrived and carried the Heels to a 23-8 season and second-place finish in the ACC.
It got even better the rest of his career. There was an Elite Eight finish in 2007, a Final Four in 2008, a dominant national title team in his senior season. Hansbrough never was the most skilled player or most dynamic, but no one ever played harder, with greater intensity. They called him Psycho T for a reason.
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