Our 2026 Candid Coaches series wrapped in the first week of September, with one of the final questions in this year's survey doubling as one of the sneaky-good barroom debates in college sports.
Who's the best college basketball team since 2000? Not the best program, but the best team from a single season.
We polled nearly 100 coaches on that question, and the absurdly dominant 2023-24 UConn won by earning 17% of the votes. Not a runaway by any means, nor should it have been. That Huskies group was loaded, but the eight other highest vote-getters all have a claim, far as I can tell. This question prompted a lot of responses
Since September is the slowest month of the college hoops calendar, let's extend this topic and get some input from the CBS Sports college hoops posse. Who's the best team of the 21st century so far?
2000-01 Duke
When I added this question to our 2026 Candid Coaches rundown in mid-July, I gave real thought to which team would have the strongest case in the ensuing weeks, as I got feedback from a variety of coaches.
After two months of mulling, I landed on the first possible candidate at the start of the timeline. Mike Krzyzewski's third team to win a national title did not have the best record of any national champion in the past 26 years, but it did win all of its NCAA Tournament games by double digits, becoming the first school in the expanded tournament era (since 1985) to achieve the feat.
My clincher: This is the only team to ever have teammates win national player of the year awards in the same season. That would be Shane Battier and Jay Williams, who are for sure two of the 10 best players Coach K ever had. The rest of the starting five: Carlos Boozer, Chris Duhon and Mike Dunleavy Jr. That quintet can go head-to-head with any other in the past 26 seasons.
That Duke team finished 35-4 and beat opponents by an average margin of 20.2 points, one of the largest margins by any team in the past 50 years.
Their KenPom efficiency margin was almost five points better than No. 2 Stanford and is one of the three largest gaps between first and second in the 30-year history of KenPom's database. That Duke team also beat 13 ranked opponents, second-most ever (only eclipsed by Arizona last season). The most famous of the 13 wins was this classic last-minute comeback on the road to beat Maryland. — Matt Norlander
2014-15 Kentucky
As noted above, there was no consensus answer to this question in our annual Candid Coaches series. But what's interesting is that if we flipped just one result from the past 26 years, there probably would've been.
What result?
Wisconsin 71, Kentucky 64 on April 4, 2015.
If you turn that UK loss into a UK win, the Wildcats would've been 39-0 heading into the title game of the 2015 NCAA Tournament, where they would've been favorites over Duke. Win that game, and 2012 Kentucky would've gone down as college basketball's first and only 40-0 national champion and become the obvious answer to any question about the 21st century's best team to date.
I mean, go back and look at that roster.
Totally loaded.
It featured nine future NBA players -- among them the No. 1 pick (Karl-Anthony Towns), No. 6 pick (Willie Cauley-Stein), No. 12 pick (Trey Lyles) and the No. 13 pick (Devin Booker) in the 2015 NBA Draft. The roster was so stacked that Booker, now a five-time All-Star with the Phoenix Suns, came off the bench and only played 19 minutes in the Final Four. (He has started 712 games in the NBA, but never did it once at UK.)
Would Calipari have two national titles now if he'd just shortened his rotation and/or played his best players the most minutes? That's a question with no definitive answer that Kentucky fans will ponder forever. Either way, what's clear is that there's a huge difference between being a 38-1 non-champion and a 40-0 national champion, and if Kentucky were the latter instead of the former, the Wildcats would've probably been the leading vote-getter -- by a good margin -- in our Candid Coaches series. — Gary Parrish
2025-26 Michigan
Hold your boos about recency bias; I know what I watched. A team that didn't lose by double figures all year. A team that bludgeoned the opposition into submission repeatedly.
A team that made an excellent, 36-win Arizona outfit look like a junior varsity club for 40 minutes in the Final Four. A team with maybe the best defense I've ever seen. Watching team after team just slowly fall apart in the second half against Michigan's all-world defense was one of my favorite trends. It was inevitable.
Maybe even more impressive was how connected that team was, despite being built primarily through the portal. Four transfers made up Michigan's starting lineup, and yet, they played together almost flawlessly. History said you weren't supposed to be able to win a National Championship primarily using the portal until Dusty May came along and took your historical trends and threw 'em into the trash.
That's coaching, evaluation and sacrifice.
Michigan finished with a +19.9 net rating against high-major teams. That rated in the 99th percentile, per CBB Analytics. Michigan's single-season net rating at KenPom is the second-best mark of the internet era, behind only 1998-99 Duke. For the first time since 2005, Michigan had three lottery picks in the same draft: Morez Johnson, Aday Mara and Yaxel Lendeborg. May was such a good coach that the Dallas Mavericks believed he was the man who could unlock the next level for the generational Cooper Flagg.
Michigan was so good that the primary plea many prayed to upset the Wolverines was "hopefully, they don't make 3s."
Special team. — Isaac Trotter
2023-24 UConn
I was on the fence between 2025-26 Michigan and 2023-24 UConn. After Trotter chose Michigan, I felt it was only right to pick UConn. The Huskies had one of the most dominant runs in NCAA Tournament history to win the title.
What made it even more impressive is that UConn was the reigning champs at the time and still instilled a level of dominance during the tournament we might not see again.
I would be shocked if a men's college basketball team repeated as national champions in the next 20 years. Florida will have a chance to make it two in three years next spring, but winning back-to-back titles in this era is tough.
UConn's 2024 title team won all six games by double-digits. It's the same result that its predecessor accomplished in 2023. One of the most impressive aspects of UConn's title team is that Stephon Castle, who went on to win NBA Rookie of the Year and has emerged as one of the league's best young stars, wasn't even the best player on that title team.
Tristen Newton was an All-American. Cam Spencer and Alex Karaban were both elite in their roles. Donovan Clingan was one of the best defenders in college basketball. The Huskies were dominant and didn't have a single upset scare during their tournament run. They're the best title team in the last 25 years. — Cameron Salerno
2011-12 Kentucky
The 2012 Kentucky team was analytically less dominant than its 2015 counterpart, which started 38-0 before losing to Wisconsin in the national championship game. But the 2012 Wildcats can absolutely be regarded as "better" since they finished the job with a title. As the only title-winning team of John Calipari's tenure, they are certainly remembered more fondly. UK finished 38-2 (16-0 SEC), riding the all-world play of Anthony Davis before he was taken with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2012 NBA Draft.
Davis' 35.1 PER is the highest of any player on a title-winning team since Sports Reference began tracking the metric in 2010. He averaged a double-double and blocked 4.7 shots per game. Even during a poor offensive night in UK's 67-59 title game victory over Kansas, Davis still impacted the game with 16 rebounds, six blocks, five assists and three steals. With an anchor like that leading the way, the Wildcats were a historic force.
Kentucky's lone loss during a 30-1 regular season came by a point on the road against Indiana. The Wildcats avenged that defeat in the Sweet 16 as part of an NCA Tournament path that featured some treachery. Each of Kentucky's final four opponents in the NCAA Tournament finished as top-20 teams at KenPom. It wasn't an easy road, but the Wildcats made it look simple. — David Cobb
