The 11 College Basketball Teams With The Longest Top 25 Streaks In History

There are hundreds of college basketball teams continually vying for a spot in the Top 25, so it’s safe to say your school is doing something right if you end up making the cut.

March Madness has frequently taught us that the number next to your team’s name doesn’t really matter that much once you’re on the court, but the Associated Press Top 25 tends to be a pretty solid metric when it comes to evaluating the best teams in the country.

Managing to get to that point in the first place is no small task, but that achievement has nothing on what the schools who’ve managed to spend the most consecutive weeks in the rankings have been able to pull off.

Kansas: 231 Weeks

You won’t be shocked to learn this list is primarily comprised of the “blue bloods” that have had sustained success for decades on end (including a few who will end up making multiple appearances).

Kansas firmly falls under that umbrella, but the perennial contenders have never boasted more success than the streak that began in the second half of the 2008-09 campaign; the Jayhawks started the year at #24 but dropped out midway through December after falling to 7-2 with a loss to UMass.

Kansas returned to the Top 25 at the start of February and stayed there during a season that ended with a loss in the Sweet 16. That was the start of a record run that ended in 2021 due to a rough patch where the team that started at 10-2 dropped out of the Top 25 after losing five of the seven games it played over the span of a few weeks.

They reappeared just a week later after that brief hiatus and would have a streak spanning more than 300 games if not for the hiccup, as the return kicked off the second-longest active streak behind Houston.

UCLA: 221 Weeks

The legendary John Wooden took over at UCLA in 1948, and while he quickly turned the team into contenders, they transformed into juggernauts midway through the 1960s.

Wooden led the Bruins to back-to-back championships they secured in 1964 and 1965 before they took a step back by going 18-8 in 1966.

However, they rebounded in a big way the following season thanks in no small part to the arrival of a superstar in the form of Lew Alcindor (the man most basketball fans know better as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and head into the 1967-68 campaign sitting at #1.

UCLA didn’t lose a single game that year and would cap off the Wooden Era by winning seven consecutive national championships (and eight in the span of nine seasons) while posting a staggering 259-12 record during that span.

The team managed to remain in the Top 25 during Gene Bartow and Gary Cunningham’s two-year stints, but the streak came to an end when they fell to 8-4 during Larry Brown’s first year at the helm.

Duke: 200 Weeks

You had to know it was only a matter of time until Duke showed up on this list, and while it’s the first time, it won’t be the last.

Mike Krzyzewski rattled off some impressive runs during his time in Durham, but none of them match the streak that began when Duke was listed at #10 at the start of the season in 1996.

That marked the beginning of a streak where the Blue Devils would win at least one NCAA Tournament game in each of the next ten seasons (including a national championship in 2001), and they stayed in the Top 25 until a four-game skid brought the good times to an end in February of 2007.

UNC: 172 Weeks

Duke isn’t the only blue blood to call North Carolina home, and UNC boasts both the fourth and fifth-longest Top 25 streaks in college basketball history.

The legendary Dean Smith was at the helm for the bulk of the first one, which began when the Tar Heels started the 1990 season at #5 after finishing the previous one unranked.

They remained in the Top 25 during his last seven seasons as head coach, which saw them lose in the Final Four on three occasions and win it all with a victory over Michigan in the championship game in 1993.

Bill Guthridge had some massive shoes to fill when he took over in 1997, and while he kept the streak alive during his first two seasons, it was snapped when they dropped out of the Top 25 a little less than a month after the new millennium rolled around.

UNC: 171 Weeks

Smith was the head coach for the entirety of another run that his successor helped top by a single week, which got underway when UNC appeared in the Top 25 at the start of the 1972-73  season following a 3-0 start where their smallest margin of victory was 29 points.

Smith won his first national championship with the Tar Heels in 1982 the season before this streak ended; UNC started at #3 but dropped 14 spots after getting off to an 0-2 start before ending up on the outside looking in at the end of December.

With that said, they bounced back with an 18-game winning streak that helped them get to #1; they finished the regular season at #5 before falling to Georgia in the third round of the NCAA Tournament.

Duke: 167 Weeks

I told you we’d be talking about Duke again (and no, this won’t be the last time).

Duke popped back up in the Top 25 just a couple of weeks after the 200-week streak I previously discussed ended, but their upset to VCU in the first round of March Madness that year reset the counter to zero.

The Blue Devils started the 2007-08 season at #11, and they’d racked up a couple of national championships during another impressive Top 25 run that was snapped at the start of February 2016 when they went from 14-3 to 15-6 with four losses in five games.

Marquette: 166 Weeks

Marquette emerged as a fairly unlikely college basketball powerhouse when Al McGuire took over as head coach in 1964; it took him a few years to get things firing on all cylinders, but they emerged as a force to be reckoned with at the end of the 1960s.

The Golden Eagles were still known as the Warriors when they started the 1968-69 season at #15 before dropping out of the rankings just a couple of weeks later.

They made their grand return to the Top 25 shortly after the new year rolled around, and they’d stay there for a decade while earning an invite to March Madness every single year (McGuire refused one in 1970 due to his issues with the seeding—they won the NIT—and Marquette secured its first and only NCAA title in 1977).

The streak was still alive when Hank Raymonds replaced McGuire in 1977, but it ended a few weeks into his third season in 1979.

Kentucky: 164 Weeks

You might think John Calipari was responsible for the longest Top 25 streak Kentucky has put together, but Rick Pitino is the man who can take a good chunk of the credit for this one.

Pitino inherited a program that was at a crossroads in the wake of a recruiting scandal but didn’t waste much time ushering in an impressive new era.

The Wildcats went 14-14 during his first season as head coach in 1989 but appeared in the Top 25 a few weeks into the following season after getting off to a 3-0 start.

Kentucky had a number next to its name for the remainder of the Pitino Era while making the NCAA Tournament six times and winning a national championship, and Tubby Smith kept the streak alive while securing a title of his own in 1998 to cap off his inaugural season with a bang.

The run lasted until the Wildcats got off to a 4-4 start in 1999, although they’d rattle off four straight wins to get back into the Top 25 a few weeks later.

Kansas: 145 Weeks

Most people associate Roy Williams with UNC, but the longest Top 25 streak of his career transpired when he was the head coach at Kansas.

As was the case with Pitino, Williams inherited a program that was reeling from a recruiting scandal before transforming them into a force to be reckoned with.

Kansas started the 1990-91 season unranked before ending up at #24 at the end of January and only continued to climb during a hot streak that ended with the Jayhawks losing to Michigan in the national championship game.

They were a constant presence in the Top 25 until February 1999; the team started at #8 but slowly but surely started sliding until the streak was extinguished.

Gonzaga: 143 Weeks

Gonzaga had never managed to have any extended success until Mark Few took over as head coach in 2000 and subsequently made them a perennial March Madness team.

The Bulldogs started the streak when they headed into the 2016-17 season at #14—a year where they finished with a 32-1 record in the regular season before falling to UNC in the national championship

Few’s squad didn’t drop out of the Top 25 until last year, as a 4-4 run that began at the start of December saw them go from #7 to unranked by the time the middle of January rolled around.

Duke: 143 Weeks

You didn’t think you were getting out of here without one more appearance from Duke, did you?

Coach K’s team started the 1986-87 season unranked but got off to a 7-1 start to earn the #20 spot just before the beginning of the new year.

Duke won two national championships during the subsequent run that ended after a severely fatigued Krzyzewski ceded control of the team to Pete Gaudet a few days into 1995 to seek treatment for a back injury that contributed to his deteriorating mental state.

The Blue Devils lost the next five games in a row to drop out of the Top 25 and finished at a dismal 13-18  during what is widely considered the worst season in the history of the program (they started the following year at #10 after Krzyzewski was healthy enough to return).