NCAAB

The 10 Best College Basketball Programs Since 2000

Where do Coach K's Duke Blue Devils rank among the best college programs this century?

Duke, North Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky and UCLA. What do these five college basketball programs have in common? Each of them is a member of what I like to call the "five big blues."

These five schools are traditionally great basketball schools. That's what they've been known for as long as I can remember. And once again, they all appear to be at or near the top of the country.

Generally, these five teams are synonymous with the best programs in college basketball. But, are we biased in saying these four have been the best since the turn of the century? Or do the numbers confirm it?

nERD is our in-house metric that indicates expected point differential compared to an average team on a neutral court. We've tracked this measurement back to 2000 and assigned a nERD to each team based on their play and efficiency for that season. Using this, I found each program's average nERD through the end of the 2015-16 season. I also found each team's average consistency as well as their average percentile ranks in pace, offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency.

The most important number is average nERD, which is what these top 10 basketball programs have been sorted by.

Now that you know the how, who's the who? Check it!