23. Ralph Sampson
The 7-foot-4 center Sampson was about as dominant as it got in NCAA basketball regular season and conference play, but he never could quite deliver a championship to the Virginia Cavaliers fans. The farthest he ever took the Cavs was losing the regional final to eventual champion North Carolina State in 1983, despite being a three-time national player of the year.
In fact, Sampson may be more famous for a loss than a win–the December 23, 1982 headline-making upset of his number-one ranked Virginia to little known Chaminade University in Hawaii. In 114 seasons the Cavaliers have yet to win it all. As for Chaminade,the mainland U.S. attention the upset generated lead to Chaminade retaining their unique school name, instead of changing it, as they had planned, to the more generic “University of Honolulu.”