The Best Rivalries In College Basketball

Here’s a list of one guy’s Top Ten college basketball rivalries. Not surprisingly, Duke-UNC is at the top.

Kentucky-Louisville are #2. Indiana-Purdue is #3 and might be better if IU won more often. Come to think of it, Kentucky-Indiana might be on the list if the teams still played.

There’s no reason why Maryland-Georgetown shouldn’t be there except a) they don’t want to play and b) Maryland has been mediocre for years and c) Georgetown has sucked for a long time now.

Xavier-Cincinnati is listed at #4 and we’d be seriously tempted to bump that one up to #2. Like Duke and UNC, the schools are close together. The 15-501 rivals are about 11 miles apart ; the Queen City rivals are just 3-4 miles from each other. That’s a very intense rivalry.

None of it can touch Duke and UNC though. The Blue Devils and Tar Heels have put together classics for 60 years. Nothing else comes close.

It’s really a shame that Kansas and Missouri aren’t on the list because the Border War was great. It’s a casualty of realignment. That’s true for Syracuse and Georgetown too.

Here’s the whole list:

1. Duke-UNC
2. Kentucky-Louisville
3. Indiana-Purdue
4. Xavier-Cincinnati
5. UCLA-USC
6. BYU-Utah
7. Illinois-Missouri
8. Gonzaga-St. Mary’s
9. New Mexico-New Mexico State
10. Penn-Princeton

Here’s our list:

1. Duke-UNC
2. Xavier-Cincinnati
3. Kentucky-Louisville
4. Indiana-Purdue
5. Arizona-Arizona State
6. BYU-Utah
7. UCLA-USC
8. Gonzaga-St. Mary’s
9. NC State-UNC (but not necessarily UNC-NC State)
10. Albama-Auburn