Best college & university basketball books according to redditors

Fab Five:Basketball, Trash Talk and the American Dream is by far the best basketball book I have read, quite cool details on how the fab 5 got scouted as well as details of games etc as well as a big emphasis on the Coach Fisher and how his tactics on and off the court!

I read a book called "Winning Sounds Like This" about the women's basketball team at Galludet, the deaf university in DC. Some opposing team at one point all stopped & pretended the ref blew the whistle, then when the deaf players stopped & looked around, the other team quickly went past them for an easy bucket (some real Andre Miller shit). A technical was called, and that was the end of that.

You should have read Mitch Albom writing about the University of Michigan's "Fab Five" back in the early 1990s. Talk about hyperbolic...

Of the books I've read:

• A Season on the Brink - John Feinstein Feinstein's chronicling of Bob Knight the 1985-1986 Indiana Hoosiers. The book was very successful and Feinstein followed it up with a number of inside looks at college basketball. 10/10
  
• The Last Amateurs It's about the Patriot League which, at the time of publication, was one of two conferences that didn't award athletic scholarships (Ivy was the other). 7/10
  
• Basketball on Paper - Dean Oliver Oliver is the granddaddy of basketball analytics. His examples are primarily focused on the NBA, but it's an interesting read that might change your perspective on how you watch basketball. 8/10
  
• Don't Put Me In Coach - Mark Titus Maybe it's just because I was a big fan of Club Trillion back in the day, but I think it's a really funny and interesting read about what big time college basketball is like today. Like A Season on the Brink, it helps you realize that, regardless of the era, these guys are just college kids. 7/10
  
• Playing for Knight - Steve Alford There are some interesting Indiana stories in here. But whereas A Season the Brink is enjoyable and a must read for any college basketball fan, this one is probably just worth reading if you're an Indiana fan. 5/10
  
• Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four - John Feinstein Eh. Not as good as some of the other ones I've read by him. 4/10.
  
  On my bookshelf but I haven't read them yet:
  
  
• Underdawgs - David Woods The story of Butler's first trip to the Final Four. This is the one I'm most excited to pick up next.
  
• Rising from the Ashes - Terry Hutchins It's about Indiana's dumpster fire leading up through it's return to the Top 25 in 2011-2012. Honestly, I only bought it because Hutchins and Woods were selling them side by side at a Butler Indiana game and I felt weird buying just the Butler book while wearing Indiana gear. It's a story that I already know by heart because I lived through it so I might never get around to reading it.
  
• The Last Great Game - Gene Wojciechowski About 1992 Kentucky - Duke. Haven't read it yet. Although I certainly plan to.

> Ed Martin was not necessarily a wealthy man.

Oh?

>He gave the recruits hundred of thousands of dollars

Well then...

>and had previously been investigated by the FBI for running illegal gambling rings.

Right, like I said: made money doing shady shit on the side.

> Ed Martin was a booster with recruit contact long before Fisher was head coach at Michigan.

Yup.

>Do not watch the Fab Five 30 for 30 documentary. ESPN allowed it to be put together by Jalen Rose, who was one of the Fab Five and has an axe to grind with Chris Webber. It is biased in the extreme.

Jalen Rose's side of the story is a fairly accurate side of the story. The only axe to grind against Webber is that Webber wrote off the rest of his teammates and the University of Michigan after the Ed Martin incident. Webber threw Martin under the bus...

"This case is about a man who befriended kids like myself, preying on our naïveté, our innocence, claiming that he loved us and that he wanted to support us, but later wanting to cash in on that love and support that we thought was free," Webber said at the time.

...and turned his back on his teammates. He refused to sit with them at the Natty and refused to participate or comment on their history.

FWIW the Fab Five are the reason I got into college basketball. First games I remember watching as a kid with my dad, a Michigan man. When I moved to Ann Arbor as a teenager, the first gift I received from my new friends at school was a book "The Fab Five: Basketball, Trash Talk, the American Dream."