Sriram Hathwar was a co-winner of the National Spelling Bee last week. This is more remarkable when you consider that this was his fifth appearance, and he continued to improve with each appearance at nationals:

Everyone loves the story of a student who keeps working hard and gets better every year. But if they gave you a movie script with that kind of improvement trajectory, it would probably be rejected as unrealistic.

The movie even has the perfect climax. Hathwar actually got a word wrong. But it came when there were just two spellers left. And in the Spelling Bee, when the last two spellers make a mistake, they both stay in the competition. Hathwar faced the agony of defeat for the fifth time, but he received a last chance for redemption, and he made the most of it.

Unfortunately in sports, things often don’t have this same perfect ending. When Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook started winning in Oklahoma City, it sure seemed like it was only a matter of time until the Thunder won an NBA title. But after making it to The Finals in 2012, they haven’t been able to take that next step. If the Thunder never win a title, they won’t be the first team to get better but fall short of the ultimate goal.

College rosters face this issue too. A few years ago, the remarkable story was how Mick Cronin had improved the fate of Cincinnati every season. Here is the Bearcats margin-of-victory rank in his first five seasons.

But since that time Cincinnati has never broken into the Top 20 in terms of margin-of-victory. Sometimes, no matter how much progress you make, reaching that next level of success remains elusive. Right now only three NCAA teams have improved their margin-of-victory five years in a row:

NC Central is the perfect story of improvement right now. They joined D1 as an independent in 2008 and after a couple of painful seasons, LeVelle Moton has guided the team all the way to the NCAA tournament. Many of the recent entrants to D1 would dream to have an improvement trajectory like that.

Southern Miss has also been interesting. Larry Eustachy took the team to the tournament in 2012 (when they probably were not that good), but Donnie Tyndall has taken over and continued the upper momentum. Unfortunately Southern Miss loses four senior starters, and last year’s shared CUSA title may have been the pinnacle.

Finally, it is amusing to find Fordham on this list as the Rams finished just 2-14 in the A10 last year. They are still far from being competitive in their league, but when you look at the underlying performance, head coach Tom Pecora has made a difference. And if one of the highest scoring freshmen in the nation, Jon Severe, sticks around and fulfills hs promise, the future may be even brighter.

In the major conferences, no team has improved more than three years in a row right now. Iowa St., Oklahoma, Houston, Wake Forest, and Virginia have all made improvements for three straight years.

Of course, for every winner there is a loser. Temple and Virginia Tech are among four teams that have posted worse margin-of-victory numbers for four years in a row. Temple has fallen from 15^th nationally in margin-of-victory in 2010 to 159^th last year, while Virginia Tech fell from 43^rd all the way down to 192^nd. And the Citadel has gotten worse for five straight years. Ed Conroy had the team at 20-13 and 171^st nationally in margin-of-victory, but since he left the Citadel has slowly fallen to 346^th last year.

Realistically, in the college world, players don’t stick around long enough for teams to build around them and slowly get better over time. And perhaps that is both the curse and the blessing of college athletics. You don’t have to worry about your team being “blocked” from a title by LeBron James or Michael Jordan. But when you must constantly re-stock the cabinet with new players and new recruits, it can be hard to consistently get better.