Iowa’s basketball program is ranked 10th — and we’re not talking about in this year’s Big Ten preseason polls.

The Hawkeye program ranks 10th in the nation in the all-time Sagarin rankings, an all-inclusive rating of all existing Division I programs that is included in the new ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia that is scheduled to be released in bookstores nationally this week.

Jeff Sagarin, whose regular-season poll is widely followed from week to the next as bracket junkies try to figure out who will get the shaft on selection Sunday, has compiled a historical list of college hoops’ top programs from the start of the 1937-38 season through last year.

It’s probably no surprise that Kentucky tops the list, edging UCLA for the top spot on rankings that includes Kansas, North Carolina and Indiana in its top five.

The Hoosiers are among eight Big Ten programs to land in the top 15 in the all-time list. Illinois is ranked sixth, one spot ahead of Duke, while Purdue, Ohio State and Iowa round out the top 10. Michigan, Minnesota and Michigan State fill the 13th through 15th spots. Wisconsin ranks 28th, Northwestern is 77th and Penn State falls in the 82nd spot on the overall poll.

Sagarin offers a top-40 ranking of programs for each decade as well beginning with the 1940s. Iowa surfaces in the top 10 twice — ranking eighth in the 1950s when the Hawkeyes made a pair of Final Four appearances and eighth in the 1980s, a decade that began with Iowa’s most recent Final Four berth under Lute Olson and included the Hawkeyes’ most recent regional final appearance under Tom Davis.

Sagarin’s best by decade:

1940s — 1. Oklahoma State, 2. Kentucky, 3. Illinois, 4. Notre Dame, 5. Indiana

1950s — 1. Kentucky, 2. Illinois, 3. Kansas State, 4. Kansas, 5. Indiana

1960s — 1. UCLA, 2. Cincinnati, 3. Duke, 4. Ohio State, 5. Kentucky

1970s — 1. UCLA, 2. North Carolina, 3. Marquette, 4. Kentucky, 5. Indiana

1980s — 1. North Carolina, 2. Georgetown, 3. Indiana, 4. Illinois, 5. Kentucky

1990s — 1. Kentucky, 2. Duke, 3. North Carolina, 4. Kansas, 5. Arizona

2000s — 1. Duke, 2. Kansas, 3. North Carolina, 4. Florida, 5. Michigan State

In addition to the Sagarin rankings and plenty of data — box scores from NCAA tourney games from the Sweet 16 to the title since 1939, for example — the book used a selection committee to rank the game’s 50 greatest players, 15 greatest coaches, 15 greatest teams, 10 best NCAA tournaments, 10 greatest individual tourney performances, 10 best tourney buzzer beaters, 15 best programs to never win it all and 50 best nicknames.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Hawkeyes Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.