If you are a basketball player who wants to win the John R. Wooden Award, you need to be more than an outstanding player. The 34^th annual winner will also have to be a solid student and good teammate and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to be on an outstanding team.

Five of the previous 33 Wooden Award winners won the national title the same season that they were honored as the country’s top player. They were Shane Battier of Duke, Ed O’Bannon from UCLA, Duke’s Christian Laettner, Danny Manning of Kansas and Darrell Griffith from Louisville.Ironically, Manning’s Jayhawk team had the worst record of any Wooden Award winner. Kansas was 27-11(.711) in 1988 and finished third in the Big 8 and lost in the conference tournament semifinals. The Jayhawks were not ranked in the final poll of the regular season and were just a sixth seed in the NCAA Tournament. However, “Danny and the Miracles” knocked off Big 8 regular-season and conference-tournament champion Oklahoma 83-79 in the NCAA Championship game in Kansas City.

Texas also finished third in their conference (the Big 12) in 2007 with a 25-10 (.714) mark and lost in the conference title game. However, freshman Kevin Durant showed off his skills by being named the Big 12 Conference Tournament MVP, despite the Longhorns finishing runner-up. Texas, a fourth seed, lost in the second round of the tournament to USC. Durant, who finished fourth in the NCAA in scoring and rebounding, became the first freshman to win the Wooden Award.

Larry Johnson of UNLV and Larry Bird from Indiana State led their teams to the NCAA Championship game with an undefeated record before losing to Duke and Michigan State, respectively.

Jameer Nelson from St. Joseph’s, Elton Brand of Duke, Marcus Camby from Massachusetts, Duke’s Christian Laettner and Lionel Simmons of LaSalle paced their teams to just two losses in their Wooden Award–winning season. Laettner was the only one of the five to win an NCAA title.

The following is a look at the team’s records of the Wooden Award winner.  On average, each Wooden Award winner paced his team to an 87.1% win percentage.