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 192 is Evansville 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 Evansville basketball!
NCAA Tournament Success
- Championships: 0
- Finals appearances: 0
- Final Fours: 0
- Elite Eights: 0
- Sweet 16s: 0
- NCAA wins: 1
- Bids: 5
Consistency Over Time
- Wins per season: 14.5
- Bids per season: 0.09
- AP Polls: 0
Player Quality & Talent
- All-Americans: 1
- NBA players drafted & played: 3
- Conference Players of the Year: 3
Conference & Other Success
- Conference regular season titles: 6
- Conference tournament titles: 4
- NIT titles: 0
- Other tournament titles: 1
Overall scoop on Evansville basketball
The Evansville Purple Aces have a very interesting history, considering they have one of the all-time coaching legends – Jerry Sloan. Sloan played at Evansville from 1962-65 and was the fourth overall pick by the Baltimore Bullets. People might forget, or not even know, that Sloan had a very solid pro career, playing in over 750 games and averaging 14.0 points and 7.4 rebounds per game for his career. But as a coach, few could stack up to Sloan, who ranks fourth all-time with 1,221 wins, despite never winning an NBA Championship.
While Sloan is the marquee name for Evansville, they did have a Consensus All-American in 1942. Wilfred “Gus” Doerner averaged 22.0 PPG that season.
As a non-DI school, Evansville was outstanding, winning the DII title in 1959, 1960, 1964, 1965, and 1971.
Evansville wouldn’t become a full-time DI member until the late 1970s, although Sports Reference does track a handful of earlier seasons. Their first NCAA Tournament bid came in 1982, with Dick Walters leading them there.
But the program reached a high point under Jim Crews. He went 294-209 with the program, leading them to the big dance in 1989, 1992, 1993, and 1999, winning regular season conference titles in all of those years, plus 1987. He would later coach at Army and retire in 2016 with Saint Louis.
The 1989 team was extra special, as 11-seed Evansville knocked off 6-seed Oregon State, before falling to Seton Hall in the round of 32. That team featured Scott Haffner, who averaged 24.5 PPG and later had a solid NBA career.
Evansville has not been back to the NCAA Tournament since the early 90s, but they did have a trio of 20-win seasons under then-head coach Marty Simmons. But lately, life hasn’t been kind, as over the past decade or so, the Purple Aces have held up the bottom of the Missouri Valley Conference. However, in 2015, they did win the CIT!
Like a lot of the programs we’ve had recently, there is a lot of history to go around for Evansville, but the history is quite a ways back.