The college basketball offseason is here, and we decided to have some fun over the next few months, ranking ALL 364 teams in D1. Number 201 is Eastern Michigan basketball.
Before you say we’re crazy – or that all of this is up for debate, let’s go over the very intricate process of how we came to this conclusion. We took a very statistical approach – with the help of Chat GPT – taking into consideration everything from March Madness wins and finishes, to AP Poll appearances, to conference players of the year. And then, a good friend of ours, Scott Blanchard, took our approach to the MAX.
Click here to visit the FIRST article, which explains how the formula works!
Here’s the breakdown of Eastern Michigan basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 0
- Sweet 16s: 1
- NCAA wins: 3
- Bids: 4
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 13.7
- Bids per season: 0.07
- AP Polls: 3
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 0
- NBA players drafted & played: 9
- Conference Players of the Year: 2
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 5
- Conference tournament titles: 4
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 0
Overall scoop on Eastern Michigan basketball
The last couple of schools in our rankings have had some all-time great players. Jackson State? Purvis Short. McNeese? Joe Dumars. But Eastern Michigan tops them both with George Gervin.
Gervin isn’t just an NBA legend. He’s a legend among legends. The Hall of Famer was a 12x All-Star, 4x scoring champ, and made the NBA 75th anniversary team. He ranks 47th all-time with 20,708 points scored, but if you merge NBA/ABA scoring, Gervin is 21st with 26,595. He retired still in his mid-30s, and could have possibly topped 30,000. But at his height, Gervin was dominant, averaging 30+ PPG in 1979-80 and 1981-82.
In college, Gervin dominated, averaging 29.5 PPG as a sophomore. But in a non-DI National semifinals game, Gervin punched a player, was suspended for the next season, and removed from the team. Gervin eventually reconciled and had his number 24 retired by EMU.
Besides being the home of a future NBA legend, the Eagles had a really good decade-long run from 1987-98. During that time frame, they made 4 NCAA Tournaments and reached the Sweet 16 in 1991. The 12-seed Eagles took down 5-seed Mississippi State and 13-seed Penn State, falling to 1-seed UNC in the second weekend. A few years later, in 1996, they took down 8-seed Duke, losing to 1-seed UConn in the round of 32.
Three of those tourney bids came under head coach Ben Braun, who won 184 games with the program. But the Eagles wouldn’t be consistently good again until the Rob Murphy era, which lasted from 2011-21. While Murphy never led them dancing, he did go 166-155 in Ypsilanti, winning one MAC regular season title.
There is one more player to note in EMU’s history – Grant Long. While he may not be close to being the legend Gervin was, Long still played in over a thousand games in the NBA. He was a journeyman whose career spanned from 1988 until 2003.
Eastern Michigan’s success in the college game really only spanned a short chunk, but they’ve been solid enough in the 2000s to stay a little bit relevant in the MAC. However, it’s a program that really looks back to its history more than anything.