NCAA Basketball: 5 most underrated head coaches heading into 2020-21

NCAA Basketball is home to some of sports’ most iconic coaches. Who are some of the most underrated?

In the modern age of NCAA Basketball, more pressure and responsibilities than ever have been put on college basketball coaches to succeed. Coaches must be proficient in recruiting, player development, player management, and stay within the boundaries of the NCAA rules.

Some coaches do this exceptionally but don’t receive the praise they should. This could be because they coach at a fairly small school that the media doesn’t focus on or a variety of other reasons. Regardless, today we will talk about five of the most underrated coaches in college basketball.

My criteria for coaches on this list is they must have four years of D1 head coaching experience, to show they’ve been consistent at the D1 level.

Before we hop into the top five though, I would like to list some honorable mentions as coaches who are underrated but didn’t make my top 5:

–Steve Pikiell (Rutgers): Pikiell has turned around two programs in his head coaching tenure. He flipped a 4-24 Stony Brook in 2006 to an American East Champion and 12 seed in 2016. Then, he moved to Rutgers and got them ranked this past season (and their first time ranked in the 21st century) and most likely would have taken them to the NCAA tournament as well.

–Mark Pope (BYU): Pope took the Cougars to new heights this season, with BYU cracking the rankings and almost certainly earning a top 6 seed in Pope’s first season with the Cougars. However even before this season, Pope spent four years with Utah Valley in the WAC with half of those being 20 win seasons. With BYU landing Matt Haarms this offseason, I wouldn’t expect the Pope and the Cougars to slow down any time soon.

Now, let’s move into my top 5 most underrated coaches (in no particular order).