Pat Knight knew his father, legendary Indiana basketball coach Bob Knight, was on the decline in his battle with Alzheimer’s when he forgot about his historic 1976 team.
“That was my go-to conversation with him. If he wasn’t having one of those days, I could get him going about the 1976 team,” Pat said. “And when he started forgetting them toward the last couple of years, I sensed the end would be coming soon because growing up, he talked about it all the time.”
Knight and the Hoosiers went undefeated en route to winning a national championship 50 years ago. Indiana remains the last Division I men’s basketball team to achieve that feat. And it may take 450 years for it to happen again. In addition to the statistical improbability, NIL, the one-and-done rule and increased competition makes it harder for a team to finish a season undefeated.
The math and the money for undefeated college basketball teams
Duke, Michigan, Arizona and Florida were the four No. 1 seeds in this year’s NCAA Tournament. No. 2-seed UConn beat Duke to reach the Final Four, and the Huskies will play third-seeded Illinois, which beat Houston and Iowa to advance. Then, Arizona and Michigan play at 8:49 p.m. Saturday for a chance to go to the championship game.
The Wildcats (36-2) began their season with 23 straight wins. Dr. Evan Miyakawa, a college basketball data scientist, told IndyStar the probability of Arizona going undefeated this season was 0.0005%. The Wolverines’ chances were 0.06%. Duke had a 0.1% chance, and two-seeded Houston, a 0.002% chance.
“If that represents a typical year, the chance that any of the top teams would go undefeated is less than 0.2% in total,” Miyakawa said. “So a team would be expected to go undefeated about once in 500 years.”
The math says no way. In an era of revenue sharing and NIL, however, teams have the money to defy odds. A.J Dybansta, the top-ranked recruit in the Class of 2025, turned down Kansas and UNC to play for BYU, with the Cougars offering him a package of approximately $7 million. The Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, SEC and Big East spend, on average, between $7 million and $10 million on a roster, according to Opendorse.
Instead of building a dominant team, a program can buy one.
John Andrzejek was an assistant at Florida from 2023 to 2025 and helped guide the Gators to a national title last season with a 36-4 record.
“For my first nine or so years in coaching, I would have said no way we’ll never see an undefeated season again because there’s too much parity,” said Andrzejek, who was named associate head coach at Louisville on Wednesday after stepping down as head coach at Campbell. “I still think the odds are stacked against it. However, revenue sharing and the transfer portal have led to the rich getting richer, so to speak.
“You are starting to see some truly dominant teams with KenPom efficiency margins the highest we’ve seen in 30 years. I think it is theoretically possible now to put together a team with the best guy at every position, or at least five of the 10 best players in the country. It would probably cost $40 million, but in theory it’s possible. I think putting together an overwhelming roster is more feasible now than at any time before in the last 20 years.”
Spending big doesn’t guarantee success. Kentucky spent the most NIL money this season and has a team payroll of nearly $22 million. The Wildcats went 22-14 and lost to Iowa State in the second round of the tournament.
Andrzejek acknowledged that social media diminishes any team’s chances of going undefeated, no matter how much it spends. The “daily pressure” of the tweets and DMs would make it a challenge to stay “loose and joyful,” “key ingredients” to Florida’s win, he said.
Because of NIL, players now use social media to promote themselves and their partnerships. Players have a brand. They are a brand. Pat Knight, longtime college assistant and later head coach of Texas Tech, Lamar and Marian, said that If not managed, it forms “entitlement.”
HoopsHQ reported 2,412 players, 43% of Division I men’s basketball players, entered the transfer portal after the 2024-25 season. Players who moved from mid-majors to high-major programs saw their earnings increase by more than 540%, according to Opendorse.
“It’s no longer about the school’s history. It’s about who is going to pay the most. No one can have a home,” Knight said. “Every player has a brand and an entourage protecting them. You really can’t coach or get on guys, or yell at them anymore.
“And back then, you could coach. My dad was relentless on those guys, and they could take it. Even if you won by 20, there was something that wasn’t good. To stay on those guys today 24/7, you really can’t do that.”
The 1976 IU team consisted of six NBA-bound players in Scott May, Kent Benson, Tom Abernathy, Quinn Buckner, Bob Wilkerson and Wayne Radford. During the season, Indiana outscored opponents by 17.3 points per game, shot 51.7% from the field and forced 20.3 turnovers per game.
“We were so well-drilled that the games were easy, quite frankly,” Buckner said when Indiana honored the 1975-76 team in February. “You played at such a high intensity level in practice, and if you didn’t, you heard about it.”
Pat said having a core group of seniors like Indiana did in May, Buckner, Abernathy and Wilson is rare in today’s age of basketball and contributed to the Hoosiers’ success.
Read next: 1976 Indiana Hoosiers’ undefeated season: An oral history
The one-and-done era
Of the seven teams that went undefeated in a season, six had at least two NBA-bound juniors or seniors. Each had one NBA-bound player who was at least a sophomore.
Most of those players didn’t have a choice to leave early, as the NBA required athletes to play four years in college until it changed the rule in 1971. One-and-done was introduced in 2005 and prohibited players from entering the draft out of high school, requiring them to be at least 19 years old.
There were 14 one-and-done players in the 2024 NBA draft and 20 in 2023. In last year’s draft, nine of the top 10 picks were freshmen. Between 2006 and 2023, there were 107 one-and-done lottery picks. Seventy of those players played for top 10 teams, according to Spectrum News.
Knight argued NIL may increase the likelihood of players returning. The rule provides freshmen who may not have performed well in their first season the opportunity to return to college and still earn money as they try to improve their draft stock. It also provides older players who won’t make the NBA the chance to max out their eligibility and take advantage of NIL.
But top-ranked freshmen, like first pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, Cooper Flag, or eighth pick in the 2023 draft, Pacers forward Jarace Walker, haven’t shown signs of wanting to return when they know their first-round spot is secured.
The other two teams to play in the national title game with a perfect record were Larry Bird’s 1979 Indiana State team (lost to Michigan State) and the 2021 Gonzaga Bulldogs (lost to Baylor in Indianapolis). Bird, then a senior, was the star alongside junior Carl Nicks. As for the Bulldogs, they had Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, then a junior, leading the way with senior Corey Kispert (Atlanta Hawks), sophomore Drew Timme (Los Angeles Lakers) and freshman Jalen Suggs (Orlando Magic).
John Calipari’s Kentucky teams infamously produced elite NBA talent and his 2015 team entered the Final Four in Indianapolis 38-0, only to lose to Wisconsin. The Wildcats featured nine players who would make the NBA: star freshmen Karl-Anthony Towns and Devin Booker, classmates Trey Lyles and Tyler Ulis, sophomores Aaron and Andrew Harrison, and Dakari Johnson, and juniors Willie Cauley-Stein and Alex Poythress.
Powerhouses aren’t retaining the talent needed to go perfect and are also facing more battles with mid-majors and smaller conference foes.
Elevated competition
Indiana had to win five tournament games to capture the national title. Today, a team has to win six. Teams playing in the “First Four” opening round must win seven. The tournament and season are longer, but the competition is also stronger, as smaller schools have access to extensive video and data to better prepare for their opponents.
Five mid-major teams advanced to the elite eight from 2021 to 2023, the most in a three-year span in tournament history.
Miami (Ohio) ended the regular season 31-0 this year, becoming the 21st Division I team to do so. The odds, “despite what was deemed a weak schedule,” were “statistically improbable,” said David Worlock, the NCAA director of media coordination and statistics.
Nebraska began its season with 20 straight wins before losing to Michigan (35-3). The Cornhuskers finished 6-6 before their first two NCAA Tournament wins in program history got them to the Sweet 16.
Florida lost to unranked Georgia and Missouri during its four-loss championship-winning season in 2025.
“We had the highest KenPom NetRating (36.46) of any champion since Duke in 2001, and yet, we really were not close to going undefeated. We were closer to losing seven to eight games than going undefeated,” Andrzejek said. “Honestly, I can genuinely say we never once thought about going undefeated. The SEC was so good that year (14 NCAA Tournament bids) that we really were in “hunter” mode. It would be hard to spend seven months with everyone wondering if you’ll ever lose.
“It’s an incredibly tough task. That is why, for me, what coach Knight and that ’76 team accomplished is so remarkable and something that, as a coach, I have thought about more than what any other college basketball team has done. They are the standard-bearers for true greatness.”
Knight and the Hoosiers earned the respect of current and former coaches. Wade Houston became an assistant coach at Louisville in 1976 and helped guide the Cardinals to a national title ten years later before becoming the first Black head coach in the SEC at Tennessee in 1989.
“To see Indiana go undefeated was amazing, and I remember being impressed with how they played and how well they were coached,” Houston recalled.
It was common for Knight and late sportswriter Bob Hammel to discuss whether the 1975 team that went 31–1 could’ve gone undefeated if May didn’t break his hand during the season. Knight was pleased with the Hoosiers’ accomplishment in 1976, but not satisfied.
In a world of NIL, one-and-done and elevated competition, coaches and players expect defeat. But for Knight, no matter the state of college basketball, perfection was the standard.
“My dad was such a perfectionist,” Pat said. “In his mind, he should have won two in a row undefeated.”
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This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Will 1975-76 Indiana be college basketball’s last undefeated champion? Data explains odds, money has say
Reporting by Joshua Heron, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
