An interesting parlor game, and we're not sure anyone has put this out there yet, but who would win between Duke '92 and this year's Florida team?
Let's get one thing out of the way first - it'd be against a fully healthy Duke team, not the one which finished with serious injuries to Grant Hill and Bobby Hurley.
That said it's a great matchup. We're obviously biased, but the Duke team was pretty phenomenal. We'd have to think that if Christian Laettner could deal with Shaquille O' Neal and Chris Webber, then he could deal with Florida's big men.
And in case someone argues that Florida had two, well so did Michigan.
Grant Hill would match up well with Corey Brewer, and would give Duke a great backup point guard if Brewer were put on Hurley. Thomas Hill would give Lee Humphrey fits. And Bobby Hurley would more than hold his own against Taurean Green.
People forget that early in that season, Duke was blowing out solid teams by 30 and 40 points. It was an amazing team.
Mark Bradley of the Atlanta paper suggests this Florida team is the best in decades. As another interesting challenge, imagine how would they would stack up against the following teams:
- UNC '82
- Georgetown '82 or '84.
- UNLV of '91-'92
- Arkansas of '94
- Michigan of '93
- Kentucky of '97
The UNC team was insanely good - with Michael Jordan, James Worthy, and Sam Perkins, they were a nightmare. Patrick Ewing's two best teams at Georgetown were intimidating as well. And until Duke beat them, UNLV was regarded as one of the truly great teams in college basketball history.
We think all three teams defend well enough to have beaten this team.
On the other hand, they would have beaten Arkansas and Michigan.
And Pitino's title team at Kentucky - and we hope we got the date right - that team was superb. In many respects, it was a mirror image of the current Gator team, although not as big. But they were incredible defensively, and they were capable of just strangling teams. We'd have to take Kentucky in that one.
So yes, Florida is one of the few to ever win back-to-back, and they should be admired, but that's not necessarily to say they're the best team for several decades.
It's a fun argument for a computer game.