The loneliest number: Why a No. 1 ranking can be more trouble than triumph

So you can’t wait for the day your favorite college basketball team gets to be ranked No. 1. Fans love it. Purdue’s will next week. But here’s a quick question:

Why?

In some ways, the honor during the season is nothing but trouble. A rose garden that if you look closely enough is really poison ivy. Opposing teams find another gear, opposing crowds reach another decibel level.  All paths from that high spot go downhill. No. 1 gets a headline when it wins but a bigger one when it loses. And if that should happen on the road, everyone knows what comes next. The students storm the floor like the Charge of the Light Brigade and the losers have to take their disappointment and tattered ranking back to their locker room, often clawing through a raucous mob chortling over their demise.

Some fun, huh?

When it comes to March, the No. 1 Associated Press ranking is like a leaky roof in a thunderstorm. Pretty much worthless. Alabama ended last regular season at the top and didn’t get past the Sweet 16. No national championship nets for the Tide, just like no nets for 24 other top-ranked AP teams in the past 26 tournaments going back to 1996. Only Duke of 2001 and Kentucky of 2012 have beaten the No. 1 jinx in that stretch.

North Carolina infamously started 2022-23 No. 1 and didn’t even get to the NCAA Tournament. No. 1 lost nine times last season, be it the Tar Heels, Alabama, Houston or Purdue. That’s one more defeat than the Connecticut Huskies, who were never No. 1 all year but steamrolled the field on the way to the national championship.

For that matter, if you believed in the sanctity of rankings, you’d expect it to be No. 1 vs. No. 2 on a good many Monday nights in April, deciding who gets to hear One Shining Moment. Forget it. That’s happened once in the past 48 years, No. 2 North Carolina over No. 1 Illinois in 2005.

Sixty-one different schools have been ranked No. 1 in the AP poll going back to its birth in 1948. Duke has been there 145 times, UCLA 134, Kentucky 124, North Carolina 116. Blueblood numbers. But Saint Joseph’s has taken its turn up there, too. Duquesne, La Salle, Holy Cross. Louisville is a hallowed basketball name but Indiana State has been No. 1 for as many weeks (and good morning to you, Larry Bird). The highest profile program never to be No. 1 at least once? Probably Maryland.

Nearly all the teams at the top have known what it means to get evicted from…