1. Remaining Undefeated Ncaa Basketball Teams
2. Ncaa Basketball Rankings
3. Undefeated Teams College Basketball
4. Undefeated Ncaa Basketball Champions
5. Ncaa Men's Basketball Undefeated Teams

At best, it is patronizing. At worst, it is polite racism. The National Collegiate Athletic Associationlast monthreleasedthe list of 17 Division I sports teams that face postseason bans for the 2017-18 school year because of low graduation rates.

As in the past, the list was utterly dominated by historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which accounted for 15 of the 17 squads. Alabama A&M and Southern University each had four teams banned. Grambling had three, Savannah State had two, and Howard and Morgan State each had one team knocked out. The only non-HBCU teams banned were the Southeast Missouri State men’s basketball team and the Illinois-Chicago men’s cross-country team.

Get the latest NCAA basketball news, scores, stats, standings, and more from ESPN. The 2017 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Championship Game was the final game of the 2017 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament.It determined the national champion for the 2016–17 NCAA Division I men's basketball season.The game was played on April 3, 2017, at University of Phoenix Stadium, now known as State Farm Stadium, in Glendale, Arizona between the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

In keeping with its penchant for protecting the image of the so-called “student-athlete,” the NCAA sugarcoated the bans to the sweetest degree possible. The 15 HBCU teams banned were less than last year’s 22. The NCAA’s press release on this improvement centered on Southern, which had nine teams banned last year. Praising how his athletes weathered the bans, Southern athletic director Roman Banks told the NCAA:

“They pulled their pants on, put their shirt on and came back to work to help lead us out of this process. They still won basketball games and football games and track meets. They gave me a lot of motivation. They’ve been so resilient. … We can’t fail the student-athletes anymore. We must do everything in our power to give them a chance to come to Southern to get an education and be the best they can be in their sport. That’s our mission.”

Seconding that mission was Southern’s associate athletic director for institutional compliance, Trayvean Scott. “We’re trying to be the model of how to get out of infractions,” Scott said. “You don’t just fold the tent and run. You are accountable, regardless of whether you were there when they happened or not.”

1. The UCLA Bruins men's basketball program represents the University of California, Los Angeles in the sport of men's basketball as a member of the Pac-12 Conference. Established in 1919, the program has won a record 11 NCAA titles. Coach John Wooden led the Bruins to 10 national titles in 12 seasons, from 1964 to 1975, including seven straight from 1967 to 1973. UCLA went undefeated a record four times. Coach Jim Harrick led the team to another NCAA.
2. Note: In 1917, 1918, 1943, and 1944, football teams from military training facilities competed alongside college programs note: In 1996, the NCAA eliminated ties with a new overtime system Teams with multiple undefeated seasons. Teams ordered by the number of undefeated seasons in the top division.

The NCAA still runs from demanding full accountability from majority-white Division I sports programs. Even though public pressure has forced most universities to work harder to keep athletes in the classroom, the NCAA still refuses to sanction schools that fool the system with overall graduation rates that appear acceptable but harbor vast and unacceptable disparities between white and black players.

In an Undefeated commentary during the last football bowl season, I cited 24 big-time men’s basketball and football programs that have African-American graduation rates under 50 percent. But that list is hardly exhaustive. If you include not-so-big-time Division I programs, the landscape is littered with many more schools from California to Florida that are below 50 percent for African-American athletes in either men’s basketball or football or women’s track.

Such schools include East Tennessee State, Tennessee Chattanooga, University of California Santa Barbara, University of California Riverside, Kennesaw State, Florida Gulf Coast, Indiana State, Southern Illinois, Liberty, University of North Carolina Wilmington, Eastern Kentucky, Moorhead State and Southeast Missouri State.

At Southern, Scott said, according to the NCAA press release, “I had to have some honest conversations with leadership. Sitting across from a coach and talking about what’s going on with the whole athletics department and how to fix his individual program … it’s difficult.” Banks said, “I’m driven to make Southern the best it can be from a holistic side, not just through basketball. From where we came from, if we stay on this path, we’re on the right one.”

Good for the Southern staff to not take sanctions lying down. But it is hypocritical, almost plantationlike, for the NCAA to demand such holistic improvement from historically black colleges when teams representing predominantly white colleges and universities fear no penalties for grossly disparate academic performance. The postseason bans were based on a team’s Academic Progress Rate (APR), a rough predictor of a 50 percent graduation rate. But while the NCAA has racial breakdowns for its Graduation Success Rates, it does not provide racial breakdowns on its website for APRs.

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So why the difference?

In last season’s NCAA basketball tournament, nine men’s teams played for the national championship with black graduation rates under 50 percent. The NCAA shows no sign of cracking down on the likes of UCLA, Oklahoma State and Northern Kentucky, which were at the bottom of the list with respective rates of 17 percent, 25 percent and 29 percent for black basketball players. The respective white graduation rates for those three teams were 80 percent, 100 percent and 71 percent.

Remaining Undefeated Ncaa Basketball Teams

The notion that UCLA and Oklahoma State took the court with respective graduation rate disparities of 63 percentage points and 75 percentage points tells you how much more work the NCAA needs to do. For now, it pats less-resourced HBCUs on the head for hard work, all but saying, “Good boy,” while the bad boys at predominantly white universities display utter disinterest in graduating their African-American players.

As the University of North Carolina’s men’s basketball team began celebrating its 2017 NCAA championship on an elevated hardwood floor, Theo Pinson was temporarily down below enjoying long-awaited tears of joy with his equally emotional parents near the stands.

“I just told them I loved them and [reminded] them that I told them we were going to win,” Pinson said after North Carolina’s 71-65 win over Gonzaga on Monday night.

Said Pinson Sr. to The Undefeated: “He is going to be in the rafters as a member of a champion for life, no matter what. For life. And to be a Tar Heels champion for life, you’re on top of the world.”

The road to becoming a “Tar Heels champion for life” was a painful one for Pinson.

March Madness

Pinson earned third-team USA Today All-America honors as a senior in 2014 while playing for Wesleyan Christian Academy in High Point, North Carolina. The 6-foot-6 guard played in the top three prep All-Star games his senior year: the McDonald’s All-American Game, the Nike Hoop Summit and the Jordan Brand Classic. The Mr. Basketball of North Carolina was ranked as the 10th best high school player in the Class of 2014. He signed with the Tar Heels over Duke, Indiana, Georgetown and Louisville.

“One of the reasons why he came to Carolina is because he loves that family love,” Pinson Sr. said.

Lost in the hoopla of Pinson’s high school career was that he also broke the fifth metatarsal bone in his left foot. The foot problems continued in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as he missed 14 games as a freshman after breaking that same bone in his left foot on Jan. 21, 2015, at Wake Forest, and he didn’t play in the 2015 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament after aggravating it. He was injury-free in a sophomore season in which he averaged 4.5 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.9 assists per game. The foot woes returned last October, and this time it was the right foot, as Pinson broke the fifth metatarsal bone and missed the first 16 games of the 2016-17 season.

Pinson made his season debut on Jan. 8, going scoreless with five rebounds and five assists against North Carolina State. He averaged 6.2 points, 5.2 rebounds and 3.3 assists in six games before reinjuring his right foot on Jan. 26 against Virginia Tech.

“The second time I got hurt I didn’t know if I was going to play the rest of the season,” Pinson said. “I called [my parents] and was like, ‘I hope I can compete with this team because I know we can win a national championship.’ I didn’t want to let them down. I knew I could help out. They told me to ‘just stay positive. You don’t know what the results are …’ They kept my head up, and look at me now.”

Pinson Sr. described that time as “rock bottom” because they didn’t know how bad the injury was initially. He gave some motivational words and tough love daily to push his son.

“It was tough, man. It was just another injury,” Pinson Sr. said. “He said, ‘I can’t do it no more. I’ve been through this three times already.’ He said, ‘I need help getting through this one.’ I would be on the phone telling him to ‘man up. We’re going to get through it.’ I asked God to help us get through it. We went through it together.”

Along with his parents’ daily support, Pinson said, he fought through his injuries with toughness, weightlifting and a great Tar Heels athletic training staff. He returned from injury against Duke on Feb. 9 and did not miss a game the rest of the season.

Ncaa Basketball Rankings

With a reputation as an energy guy who makes others better, Pinson started at forward for North Carolina in the championship game Monday night.

“I’ve got to give them more credit than anybody for getting me back out there and keeping me healthy,” Pinson said.

As bad as the foot pain was, Pinson suffered the worst pain of his college basketball career when the Tar Heels lost in the 2016 NCAA championship game to Villanova in nightmarish fashion.

With Pinson watching helplessly from the bench, Villanova guard Kris Jenkins made a game-winning shot at the buzzer to keep the Tar Heels from winning their first championship since 2009. This was after North Carolina guard Marcus Paige hit a 3-pointer to tie the game at 74 with 4.7 seconds remaining. Pinson recalled Villanova’s championship confetti falling on him as he departed from the floor in defeat. There was also a picture of him sitting in the locker room afterward with his head down that he used as a screen saver on his cellphone as a motivating reminder of the devastating loss.

“I don’t remember nothing right now,” Pinson said of the 2016 NCAA championship game.

Gonzaga entered Monday’s game with a 37-1 record and quite capable of giving North Carolina a second consecutive title-game defeat. Before heading to the championship game, Pinson took a phone call from his parents, who offered words of wisdom and good luck.

“I told him before the game, ‘Win or lose, son, I’m proud of you because you’ve carried yourself respectable as a man. You’ve upheld the university and all this good stuff. I’m proud of you, son. Go and enjoy,’” Pinson Sr. said.

Pinson also had some words for his parents before he got off the phone.

“They told me that no matter what, stay positive and keep your head up,” he said. “I told them, ‘Don’t worry about it. We’re going to win some games.’ ”

The Bulldogs entered halftime with a 35-32 lead and the momentum. Pinson said North Carolina coach Roy Williams told the players at halftime that if they “want to be a champion, it’s going to be a dogfight.” The Tar Heels responded to their coach by outscoring the Bulldogs 39-30 in the second half. North Carolina made the necessary defensive plays down the stretch during the foul-plagued game to claim redemption. Pinson described the title game as “ugly” and par for the course for how the Tar Heels won en route to their title.

Undefeated Teams College Basketball

As the clock started ticking down, Pinson started crying tears of joy after he saw Gonzaga guard Nigel Williams-Goss shed tears of pain. And once the buzzer finally sounded, Pinson tossed the ball high into the air in the mammoth University of Phoenix Stadium in celebration.

“It’s amazing to throw the ball up in the air. That’s it. There is nothing else better than that, I promise you,” Pinson said.

Pinson had six points, nine rebounds, two assists, one steal and one block in 30 minutes. The communication major also was much-needed comic relief for his Tar Heels teammates before the game.

“He’s the energy buzzer,” North Carolina assistant coach Steve Robinson told The Undefeated. “All day today I felt that he was trying to keep everybody loose on purpose, from this morning at breakfast. He has this voice about him that everybody loves. When you come up here, he brings a smile to your face.

“The injuries have been unfortunate for him. But he’s bounced back and we’ve finally been able to keep him on the court. I still don’t think we’ve seen the best of Theo Pinson as a player yet, but we’ll keep working and try to get him there.”

The Tar Heels won the sixth national title for the University of North Carolina. The new banner will join the others before next season in the rafters of the Dean Smith Center after an eight-year drought. Pinson, a North Carolina native, knows just how special it is to be in that rare championship class for the storied program.

“All the former guys were saying, ‘Just pull up a chair to the table,’ ” Pinson said. “We wanted to pull up a chair. I told [ex-Tar Heels forward] Sean May to clean my chair off and have it ready for me when I come to the table.”

Undefeated Ncaa Basketball Champions

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Pinson’s mom filmed a precious moment on her iPad between father and son. Both wearing North Carolina No. 1 jerseys with the name Pinson printed on the back, they cried and hugged while the champion kept hitting his fist on his dad’s back and told him twice, “I told you we were going to win.” As his son ran back onto the floor to celebrate with his teammates, Pinson Sr. held his right fist in the air in a much-needed celebration after so much disappointment.

Ncaa Men's Basketball Undefeated Teams

Pinson said he will “never forget” the feeling of embracing his dad after winning a championship. Neither will his pops.

“That showed me the love he has,” Pinson Sr. said. “He knows that I’m here, his mom is here and his family is here. … This is one of the biggest moments of our lives, for him though, not me. Son, you don’t have to do anything for me. I’m already happy.”