Big 12 Basketball: Top 10 head coaches of the century (2000-20)

Who are the most accomplished head coaches in Big 12 Basketball this century?

Though the conference has somewhat changed as a result of realignment, Big 12 Basketball has spent the first few decades of this century clearly as one of the nation’s best basketball conferences. While much of the attention is on these program’s football teams, the basketball success experienced around the conference cannot be overlooked. While Kansas gets much of the attention, members both old and new have made major strides on the national level.

Across these last few decades, the league has seen their talent coached by some of the great coaches in our game today. These historical programs did not build themselves, and the names that remain have done fantastic work on the national scale. Nearly every coach on our list has coached a team to the Final Four and they’ve all been especially successful in their seasons in the Big 12, bringing elite talent and coaching them into champions.

We’re going to take a closer look at the ten greatest head coaches of the Big 12 since 2000. It won’t be too difficult to pick out the true legends, though we’ll be basing our ranking on a number of factors. In a league like the Big 12, it’s obviously important to achieve postseason success and to win conference titles, though simple things like a program’s growth will also be noted. Living legends of the game still occupy the sidelines of some of these schools and there is no shortage of talent, either on the bench or actively playing for these programs.

We’ll begin running through each of these coaches, carefully examining their accomplishments in the Big 12 specifically since the turn of the century.