First, I don’t put too much stock in tournament wins when it comes to evaluating individual players’ performances. There have been countless studs that are just on poor quality teams, and the strength of your team as a whole is not indicative of your skill level as an individual. Durant had one of the most dominant years in men’s basketball history. If you want to look at team performance, keep in mind that he single handedly was dragging a terrible roster to end the season ranked 11th in the final AP poll. Not too bad for a roster who’s next best player was fellow freshman D.J. Augustin, an undersized point guard, who’s true skill level has been on display in Charlotte the last couple of years..
But again, forget the team’s success, let’s look at his individual stats. Unfortunately advanced +/- numbers aren’t published for college, so we can’t look historically into what their true values were for their teams (if you know of a place to look at this, I would love to know about it), however we can see the straight up box scores. Durant averaged 25.8 Points, and 11.1 rebounds while shooting over 47% from the field, over 40% from the arc, and almost 82% from the line. He was playing an incredible 35.9 minutes a game, which is impressive when you consider how efficient he was. Compare that to Rose’s 14.9 Points, 4.5 boards, and 4.7 assists, with a similar FG%, but a noticeably worse 3Pt and FT% while only playing 29.2 MPGs. Anthony was a more productive player than Rose, scoring 22.2 a game with 10 boards, but shot a lower FG%/3Pt%/FT% than Durant, and played only 36.4 minutes a game. Across the board he came up a little short of Durant’s numbers. Now some of that can be attributed to his superior teammates, and the fact that Anthony didn’t need to do as much as Durant, but then by making that comment you can easily see how your other comment on the team’s overall performance isn’t that valid, because we were dealing with different degrees of talent on those teams.
Looking at this, I think we can clearly see that Durant was the most productive and impressive individual out of those three, and while the longhorns may not have fared as well as the Tigers or Orangemen, Durant certainly deserves to be mentioned as one of if not the best one-and-done players ever.

Man, I spent too much time doing this………

In considering your inclusion of the 1998-99 UCLA guard set as well as an abundance of early 2000′s back court arrangements, I feel as though it is only fair for me to remind you of a late 90′s tourney champ that easily could’ve rivaled your aforementioned suggestions. I give you the 1996-97 Arizona Wildcats:

While garnering a somewhat meager 25-9 regular season record and finishing 5th in the Pac-10 going 11-7 that year, its hard to argue that this could’ve been the most dominant tournament team of all time. On their route to the title, they beat three #1 seeds (only team ever to do so) and won two overtime games, one being the national title games. Oh and not to mention, all the while being lead by a stellar back court.

Mike Bibby — ’97 Pac-10 freshman of the year (13.5 ppg, 5.2 apg) — went on to be Pac 10 Player of the year in ’98 as well as a Consensus All American

Michael Dickerson — ’97 All American (18.9 ppg, 4.5 rpg) — was also a 98′ All American

Miles Simon — Was the ’97 tournaments Most Outstanding Player as well as the tournaments leading scorer (18.4 ppg, 4.2 apg, 4.1 rpg)

Jason Terry — (10.6 ppg, 4.4 apg, 2.5 spg) Coming off the bench as a Sophomore, and later went on to be named an All American and Pac-10 player of the year in ’99

Just thought this back court deserved a nod. Overall though, very well done Shuttlesworth