The Magnificent Seven: College Basketball's Blue Bloods

Unveil the secrets behind college basketball's true royalty--seven powerhouse programs that have dominated the NCAA Tournament for decades

There is a great deal more than Madness lurking within the Division 1 NCAA Basketball Tournament. There are equally strong traditions, symmetries, and even normalities that also define this annual rite of passage. And one of the most powerful of those is the perennial dominance displayed by college basketball's "Blue Bloods." These seven programs, each of which has won at least four NCAA titles, have collectively harvested 45 of the 85 championship trophies awarded since the inauguration of the tournament in 1939.

In The Magnificent Seven: College Basketball's Blue Bloods, Mark Mehler and Jeff Tiberii take a close look at those magnificent seven--Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA, North Carolina, Duke, Indiana, and the University of Connecticut--examining how they have managed over multiple decades to establish themselves as American basketball royalty. While there are many commonalities among them that help explain much of their success, each program has traveled its own unique path to glory. In addition, The Magnificent Seven examines several additional basketball programs including Louisville and Villanova which have likewise made indelible marks over many years, but fall just shy of blue blood status. Call them the "light-blue bloods." All the history, ultimately leading to the fulfillment of generations of hoop dreams, comes alive in these pages.

Mark Mehler is a veteran journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and Sports Illustrated. He is the co-author of Madness: The 10 Most Memorable NCAA Basketball Finals (Sports Publishing, 2018). He lives in Jackson Heights, NY.

Jeff Tiberii has spent the last 20 years as a reporter in public radio, covering North Carolina politics since 2015. He has covered higher education, the opioid epidemic and college athletics, including multiple NCAA and ACC basketball tournaments. Jeff has been honored as North Carolina Radio Reporter of the Year four times. He lives in Raleigh, NC.