As of today, 1975 seems like the correct answer. This topic has a UCLA problem. How do you ignore the period that established CBB as a national sport. Yes, college basketball existed before Wooden, Alcindor, and Russell but ask anyone what the best team(s) were and 90% of people will point to those UCLA teams and it doesn't matter they were under completely different rules and CBB wasn't the big money enterprise so a few guys buying the best players and many schools didn't allow black players at all Like talking about baseball and ignoring Babe Ruth or golf and ignoring Bobby Jones.
They are relevant to the modern game but they were so pivotal to the sport you can't ignore them. Not yet, anyway.
Same for 1979. The Bird/Magic duel launched the tournament into the national consciousness. Wooden was dominant, but so was Trinity Squash. Not everyone cared.
By rights we should start at the 64 team at-large era. As we've seen, winning a conference isn't a prerequisite to win the tournament. At the very least, start with the 32 team years.
1975 gives a nod to all of the above and happens to be a round 50-year period. No one thinks of Army football as a blueblood football program, yet they were as dominant as the Kentucky BB program of that era.
So I posted this in another
thread and in that 50 year period the following are the true top programs.
Do you have as many championships -6 or Final Fours - 7 as UConn in the last 50 years? (1975-2024)
It's a pretty short list with no fat on it.
THE LIST:
UConn (6/7)
UNC (5/15)
Duke (5/14)
Kentucky (4/11)
Kansas (3/10)
Michigan State (2/9)
UCLA (2/7) with (0/1) vacated
Others just short or not really close:
Indiana (3/5)
Villanova (3/5)
Florida (2/5)
Louisville (2/6) official with (1/2) vacated
Syracuse (1/6) oh so close but TO>1
Arkansas (1/4)
Georgetown (1/4)
Arizona (1/4)
UNLV (1/4)
Michigan (1/4) official with (0/2) vacated
Houston (0/4)
Maybe you need more than one championship but 7 FF in 50 years is still pretty good. We'll need to work on raising the bar to keep out the riff raff.