The Blue Blood Scorecard

Rating a team's season, plus 10 years of blue blood performance

As I negotiate the emotions of UNC’s season-ending Sweet 16 loss, I’m trying to articulate my mental model for assessing a blue blood’s season. Obviously, circumstances and context will change how fans feel about a specific year, so this is more of a measuring stick for a “generic” blue blood season. When looking back 4 or 5 years later — after the pains, details and missed opportunities fade away — how should a blue blood fanbase gauge the season?

The Scorecard

I give more details on each below, but here’s the scorecard:

• Missing the tourney: Unacceptable. A bad year

• Make the tourney but lose in Round of 64 or 32: A disappointing year, but not necessarily hitting the panic button

• Sweet 16: The standard, the baseline. You feel good about the season and can have some pride, but the team won’t sniff any “all-time” accolades

• Elite 8: A great season, but not yet good enough to enter “lore.” Maybe a favorite by recent standards but not by historical standards

• Final Four: An amazing, one-of-the-best-teams type of season

• National Championship: Undeniable legends

No Tourney

Without a tourney bid, there’s no moral victory or momentum years or any of that bullsh*t when you’re a blue blood. The level of disappointment and disgust varies with the flavor of the miss. There’s the well-chronicled 2022-23 UNC season, going from preseason #1 to out of the tourney, which is peak frustration.

Some years, down recruiting cycles, NBA depletion and graduations will coincide for a painfully untalented (by blue blood standards) roster¹. You just bear these seasons when they come, but these have to be the exception and not the rule.

Regardless of the variety, missing the tourney as a blue blood is a down year that can get a coach’s seat cooking.

Early Tourney Exit

This also comes in several flavors. There’s the high-seed, sky-is-falling upsets (UK vs St. Peter’s, UK vs Oakland, KU vs Bucknell, Duke vs Lehigh, Duke vs Mercer, UNC vs — huh look at that, never happened to UNC).

Then there’s the young team that’s building toward something. You can usually convince yourself that a championship window is opening for a few seasons², so there’s some hopefulness with these types of early exits. But sustaining momentum from year to year is harder now with the transfer portal.

Sometimes a bad team will squeak into the tourney and get bounced early³. You just sorta accept these because even “bad” teams should make the tourney when you’re a blue blood.

Sweet 16

Sweet 16s are usually twinged with disappointment, especially when you’re a high seed (like UNC this season). Blue bloods don’t really benefit from the “unexpected” S16 runs because it’s the standard, so a S16 is generally a sigh of relief rather than an exclamation. But that feeling itself is the blue blood privilege and a reminder that for most other schools, a S16 is a massive accomplishment.

Since 64-team tournaments started in 1985, only 82 schools have ever made an E8 or better, so a S16 is the high water mark for most. We should share in the pride. You can smile about a S16 despite the sour taste in your mouth.

Elite 8

Elite 8s have the most cognitive dissonance. It’s clearly a successful season, but the fact that immortalization is right-there means the what-could-have-been can drown out the joy.

These teams might achieve “local legend” status and rise to favorites for current fans. Obviously, only four teams make the Final Four each year, so a ton of talented, worthy teams stall out early.

Zion’s Duke team, Kendall Marshall’s broken wrist, Kentucky’s 2017⁴ and 2019 squads and Kansas’ 2016 and 2017 squads are recent examples of these near misses.

Final Four

A Final Four banner flies forever. Landing in this group means you didn’t win the natty, which is heartbreaking after making a Final Four. I’ve had to experience two gutting UNC championship losses. The sharpness of a buzzer beating loss and 15-point collapse dull ever so slightly with time but are still present. The main change in the net accounting of the season is that long-lasting pride and joy build up (ending your rival’s rat-faced coaching career helps). It’s f*cking hard to make a Final Four, and it’s something to be proud of, regardless of who cuts down the nets.

National Champions

This is obvious. The fact that the blue bloods have somewhere between 3 and 11 nattys⁵ in ~100 years of basketball proves that this level of success is incredibly rare, even for the cream of the crop. Any national championship should be treasured and canonized.

In the growing lore of a blue blood, a S16 team might only merit a sentence, but for all the wrong reasons: an unexpected loss, an injury that derailed a hopeful season. E8 teams might earn a paragraph, but you don’t unequivocally enter canon until the Final Four. Final Four teams live on, and national champions are undeniable legends with full pages or chapters written about them.

10 Years of Blue Blood Performance

This season — a mixed bag for the five ~real~ blue bloods — offers a good case study of the scorecard:

• UNC: Sweet 16, but lost as a 1 seed. We should feel good, but the disappointment feels like its outweighing the pride

• Duke: Elite 8, but lost to an in-state, conference-rival 11 seed. Given the talent, the disappointment probably outweighs the joy (although I’m quite pleased, personally)

• UK: 1st round loss sending Coach Cal packing up to Arkansas. The scorecard indicates that a single 1st round loss shouldn’t bring out the panic button, but UK’s string of early exits was enough to prompt the shakeup

• Kansas: 2nd round loss. As the preseason #1, this is definitely a disappointment. But Kevin McCullar’s injury and a weak bench sapped a talented team. Fans — and Coach Self, apparently — can look hopefully toward next season, so this has the “building toward something big” feel in Lawrence

• UCLA: Missed tourney, and the momentum of the past few seasons seems to have petered out

I started this post telling myself I wouldn’t get into any blue blood definition arguments. But alas. Here are summaries of the last 10 years for different groups of “blue bloods”

• Real blue bloods: UNC, Duke, Kansas, UK, UCLA

  • 3 national championships last 10 years

• Recent additions: UConn, Villanova

  • 4 national championships last 10 years

• Good before my lifetime: Indiana

  • 0 national championships last 10 years

With 7 of the last 10 national champions coming from this group, it’s fair to say the blue bloods continue to be competitive in the era of parity. See the full list of blue blood performance below⁶.

Real Blue Bloods

UCLA surprised me with 5 “successful” seasons. Apart from their 11-seed Final Four run, no recent UCLA season stands out in my mind. UCLA’s successful seasons are more than Kansas’ 4, but KU won a title, which outweighs all. I’d have said UCLA’s blue blood standing was wavering considering their last title was in 1995, but Final Fours help reset the clock.

Duke and UNC lead the pack with 6 “successful” years, and each has won a title in the window. But the fact that 6 out of 9 (with 2020 canceled) is the best mark means this scorecard holds a high bar (as it should).

Recent Additions

Not to get too pedantic, but I don’t think the “blue blood” title fits for UConn and Villanova. The term itself comes from inspecting royal veins, which implies a storied heritage and lineage.

This isn’t saying that those teams doesn’t deserve a title or inclusion in some group, but we need to change the title or group to make them fit. They don’t have the lineage to support the “blue blood” moniker, but it would be dumb to not count them in the conversation of dominant teams. Maybe something like:

Blue Blood: Good a long time ago and still good now

Gatsby, New Money, some other term: Not as rich of a history but good now

Has-Beens: Indiana. Good a long time ago but not relevant now

UConn is clearly the dominant program of the era and deserves recognition in the upper echelon. However, with the freight train that is UConn basketball still chugging, it’s easy to have recency bias in terms of the Huskies’ 10-year stretch: 8 down years preceding the dominance. The 10-year window cuts off their 2014 title, and 3 titles in 11 years (and 6 in 25 years) is indisputably good, but UConn is feast-or-famine.

I’m not entirely sure Villanova has earned even the New Blood, Great Gatsby, New Money title. While they have some history from their 1985 title, that team was an 8 seed and not some powerhouse. Two (convincing) titles in three years is notable, but we didn’t go inducting Florida into the curated greats after their back-to-back. Nova is still reeling from Jay Wright’s departure, so let’s see them prove they can win with a different coach before nominating them as an ever-present program.

Good Before My Lifetime

My basketball consciousness starts around 2003. If you stretch Indiana’s window back then, you get 3 S16s, 0 E8s, 0 F4s, 0 championships. (Granted, this narrowly misses their last Final Four in 2002.) By comparison, occasionally relevant NC State just made their 4th S16 in that period. In a 20+ year period, having as many Final Fours as George Mason and VCU and fewer than Butler means you are decidedly not a blue blood. You’re a has-been. The Hoosiers have one title (1987) since the tournament expanded to 64+ teams.

If Indiana had some early-aught KU-like runs — with talented teams that just couldn’t get it done — I might feel slightly differently. But the Hoosiers haven’t fielded a nationally competitive team in forever. The Hoosiers have briefly crossed my mind twice: when they beat UNC in the 2016 ACC-Big 10 challenge, and when I had mild concern that Yogi Ferrell might disrupt our eventually F4 run in 2016 (he did not). Blue bloods should be the ever-present, always-relevant teams. A down year for a blue blood is newsworthy, but down years have been the norm for Indiana.

If Indiana fans have deluded themselves into thinking they’re still a blue blood — and this scorecard still applies — then I feel sorry for them because that’s a lot of Ls to swallow.

1. For example, UNC’s 2019-20 team and UNC’s 2009-2010 team

2. For example, the 2012-13 and 2013-14 UNC’s teams that culminated in back-to-back national title appearances a few seasons later

3. For example, UNC’s 2020-21 team

4. Quick plug for Luke Maye’s 2017 Elite 8 winner

5. Nova has 3 titles. As I describe below, I’m not sure Nova has earned new blood/blue blood status. But KU is a blue blood and has 4 titles

6. Key for table:

• Miss = No tourney

• 1RL = 1st Round Loss (including First Four)

• 2RL = 2nd Round Loss

• S16 = Sweet 16

• E8 = Elite 8

• F4 = Final Four

• Natty = National Championship

• N/A = 2020 tournament was cancelled. If the team was projected to be in the field (based on KenPom and Bracket Matrix), they’re listed as N/A