IU's greatest players of all-time: Comparing lists

Over the course of the summer, The Sporting News' Mike DeCourcy has been rolling out his lists of the top 10 players from major college basketball programs.

Today was Indiana's turn. And with a program noted for its storied history (five national championships, 21 Big Ten titles and 44 All-Americans), you'd expect there to be a large pool of players to choose from -- and plenty of debate.

DeCourcy's Top 10 tends to focus on the Hoosiers' Bobby Knight era (1971-2000), which makes sense considering the program's success during Knight's tenure.

"An examination of the greatest players ever to wear an Indiana uniform shows that 70 percent of the top 10 was coached by Knight, and most of those who came close without making it onto the list did as well," DeCourcy writes.

Prior to the 2013 season, the IndyStar ranked IU's top 50 players in history and while many of the names on our list and DeCourcy's are the same, there are some notable differences. Let's get to The Sporting News' list first:

1. Isiah Thomas -- "He was quicker, faster, better than everyone he played. Everyone."

2. Steve Alford -- "Alford didn't just make shots. He made big shots. He made them under pressure and against extraordinary defensive attention."

3. Scott May -- "The shining star of what many consider the greatest team in college basketball history."

4. Calbert Cheaney -- "Cheaney stands as the career scoring leader at IU, one of 34 players in Division I history to top 2,600 points."

5. Don Schlundt -- "In the four games on the way to IU's 1953 NCAA championship, he avearged 30.8 points and, remarkably, managed not to be named the Final Four's most outstanding player."

6. Kent Benson -- "Benson's physical power was at the core of teams that compiled a combined 63-1 record from 1974-76."

7. Walt Bellamy -- "In the 54 years since Bellamy averaged 15.5 rebounds per game, there have been only a dozen double-figure seasons by Hoosiers players, and only IU greats George McGinnis (14.7 in 1971) and Steve Downing (15.1 in 1972) approached Bellamy's career mark in a single year."

8. Alan Henderson -- "Henderson ranks as one of the most versatile and valuable players to wear an IU uniform."

9. Branch McCracken -- "In an era when scoring was less common, he produced nearly a third of IU's points."

10. Mike Woodson -- "Woodson avearged 18.5 points as a freshman and topped that every subsequent season, finishing with 2,061 points."

While DeCourcy went with Thomas, who left after his sophomore season, we had May atop our list -- though it's splitting hairs among those two:

"Even though Thomas may widely be considered to have the best all-around game of any athlete to ever play basketball at Indiana, number two was as high as I could go," we wrote two years ago. "No. 1 of all time needed to come from the 1976 national champs if at any way possible."

George McGinnis ranked No. 4 on our list, while DeCourcy left him off his list entirely. Another disagreement was the placement of Henderson. The Sporting News ranked the former Brebeuf Jesuit star at No. 8, while he landed at No. 16 on our list.

Obviously, no one is right or wrong, but lists like these always provide some good debate.

IndyStar Top 10: (originally published in 2013)

1. Scott May

2. Isiah Thomas

3. Calbert Cheaney

4. George McGinnis

5. Steve Alford

6. Walt Bellamy

7. Don Schlundt

8. Mike Woodson

9. Quinn Buckner

10. Archie Dees