The Premo-Porretta Power Poll is a retroactive end-of-year ranking for American college basketball teams competing in the 1895–96 through the 1947–48 seasons. These rankings are not officially recognized by the NCAA.
The poll was intended to serve collectively as a source of information regarding the relative standings of college basketball teams within given seasons during the early decades of the sport. No systematic end-of-season national tournament existed in college basketball until the founding of the National Invitation Tournament in 1938 and the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship Tournament in 1939, the latter of which determines the NCAA champion for a given season. Furthermore, no regular, recognized national polling took place for college basketball prior to the establishment of the Associated Press poll and the coaches poll in the 1948–49 and 1950–51 seasons, respectively.
Background Patrick Premo, a professor emeritus of accounting at St. Bonaventure University, and Phil Porretta, a former computer programmer, have each spent more than 40 years—first separately, and later collaboratively—researching the early history of college basketball. Their archival work has often uncovered game results that had not previously been reported in books and basketball program media guides, such as the results of competition against AAU, semi-professional, club, and YMCA teams. Whereas Bill Schroeder of the Helms Athletic Foundation retroactively named only his choice of the top team nationally for each season from 1900–01 through 1941–42 (and then annually selected a national champion for each season from 1942–43 through 1981–82), Premo and Porretta have used the data they have compiled to compare teams against one another and assign rankings to multiple teams for each season—15 teams for the 1895–96 season, 20 teams for each season from 1896–97 through 1908–09, and 25 teams for each season from 1909–10 through 1947–48.
Premo's findings, which he clarified were "simply his opinion", were first published in 1995 as the Premo Power Poll. Most recently, in 2009, Premo and Porretta's full collaborative rankings were included with the core information for each season prior to 1949 in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia.
Retroactive top-ranked teams
The teams listed below are the highest-ranked teams in the Premo-Porretta Power Poll for that season.
+ Power Poll No. 1 teams (1892–1948) Year Premo (1995) Premo-Porretta (2009) 1892–93 Iowa — 1893–94 Hiram — 1894–95 Temple — 1895–96 Temple Yale 1896–97 Yale 1897–98 Mount Union 1898–99 Yale 1899–1900 Yale 1900–01 Bucknell 1901–02 Minnesota 1902–03 Minnesota 1903–04 Columbia 1904–05 Columbia 1905–06 Wabash 1906–07 Chicago Williams 1907–08 Wabash 1908–09 Chicago 1909–10 Williams 1910–11 St. John's 1911–12 Wisconsin 1912–13 Navy 1913–14 Wisconsin 1914–15 Illinois 1915–16 Wisconsin 1916–17 Washington State 1917–18 Syracuse 1918–19 Navy 1919–20 Penn 1920–21 Missouri 1921–22 Missouri 1922–23 Army 1923–24 North Carolina 1924–25 Princeton 1925–26 Syracuse 1926–27 Notre Dame California 1927–28 Pittsburgh 1928–29 Montana State 1929–30 Alabama 1930–31 Northwestern 1931–32 Purdue 1932–33 Texas 1933–34 South Carolina Kentucky 1934–35 Richmond NYU 1935–36 Long Island 1936–37 Stanford 1937–38 Temple NIT 1938–39 Long Island NIT 1939–40 Indiana NCAA 1940–41 Long Island NIT 1941–42 Stanford NCAA 1942–43 Illinois 1943–44 Army 1944–45 Iowa 1945–46 Oklahoma A&M NCAA 1946–47 Kentucky 1947–48 Kentucky NCAA
NIT champion: NIT NCAA tournament champion: NCAA
References