NCAA Basketball: Ranking the last 25 national title winning head coaches

Longevity is impressive, especially in today’s college basketball world. Coaches are rarely given second chances to prove themselves, while others build impressive programs that last for decades.

Tubby Smith is a weird exception to this rule. Smith currently coaches at High Point, his alma mater, which is his record seventh Division I head coaching position. He won an NCAA title in just his seventh year as a head coach, but let’s take a closer look at the whole picture.

After playing at High Point, Smith embarked on a coaching career that took him to the high school level and as an assistant coach at the collegiate level. He got his shot as a head coach in 1991 at Tulsa, turning a successful four years into the job at Georgia.

In 1997, he was the pick to replace Rick Pitino at Kentucky, having served as an assistant with the Wildcats six years earlier. It was here, back in 1998, that Smith won his national championship in his first year with Kentucky.

It’s easy to give him the benefit of the doubt. Smith was replacing a very popular coach in Pitino and inherited a team that had played in the last two championship games (winning in 1996, losing in 1997). There were no All-Americans or future stars on this Kentucky roster (Nazr Mohammed, Wayne Turner, etc.), but this 1998 team was special.

Unfortunately for Smith, this was his only trip to the Final Four as a head coach. He’d return three times to the Elite Eight with the Wildcats. After 10 “subpar” seasons, he’d leave for Minnesota (and eventually Texas Tech, Memphis and High Point).

His 613 career wins are impressive, though he has never recruited and built a Final Four team in his long career. There’s no denying that Smith has had success, but it’s also clear that he could have done a lot more at Kentucky.