NCAA Basketball: Ranking the 20 best head coaches from past 5 seasons

Who are the best NCAA Basketball head coaches of the past five years? Here’s a list presented without any lavish or robust opinions and just data that is based on statistics, wins and losses.

The end of the 2019-2020 NCAA Basketball season was not what college basketball coaches and their programs wanted due to the Covid-19 pandemic. 

However, looking back on the past five seasons for a select few NCAA Basketball head coaches, there are many accomplishments to reflect on that they and their programs have earned over that course of time. Similar to the list compiled of college football coaches over the past five seasons, the compilation of college basketball coaches were carefully selected.

Hall of Fame coaches of blue blood programs is still going strong, while a new emerging group of not as experienced coaches have been identified as up and coming stars among their peers. But how do their accomplishments match up against one another?

After analyzing and closely looking at numerous coaching resumes over the past five years by inspecting and scrutinizing what they have accomplished in terms of their recent coaching performances, 20 distinguished coaches have shown to have been the most proficient and accomplished based on wins, championships, and NCAA tournament performances.

These 20 head coaches are part of a very selective group who have impressive accomplishments and feats with division and conference championships as well as NCAA tournament victories and Sweet Sixteen appearances.

When writers, podcasters, fans, and people alike put together sports lists such as ranking the top players and or coaches, it most likely is highly subjective and or fairly bias in a majority of cases. Even though this list is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination and the point system is not flawless, it provides analytical and math based analysis in an attempt to eliminate the subjective factors that many lists are comprised of.

When compiling this list, first and foremost, many factors and criteria were taken out of consideration and they are as mentioned below:

*The previous condition of the program good or bad, prior to becoming the head coach.
*Factoring in a coach being at a prototypical “blue blood” or power 5 program or even if he is at what is considered a high-end mid-major school.
*How well the coach is perceived to make in-game decisions and substitutions during games.
*Not critiquing how he schedules difficult or easy non-conference games each season.
*Ability to recruit highly rated players as part of an incoming class of student-athletes.
*The perception and reputation of being or not being a great x’s and o’s coach.
*The amount of time that a head coach has been coaching at the Division one level.
*The ability or inability to handle off the court issues such as having their program being put on NCAA probation.
*The ability to hire assistant coaches who recruit well and help advance the program overall.

Second, the list of coaches had to meet only two specific requirements:

*Must be a current Division one head coach.
*Won at least a conference regular season or tournament championship, or reached the final round of sixteen of the NCAA tournament over the past five seasons.

Third, below is the criteria and scoring breakdown to determine the ranking of the top coaches in division one basketball in the past five seasons.

Criteria and Scoring Breakdown

40 points for National Championships

25 points Final Four Appearances

20 points for Regular Season Conference Championships (ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, Big East, and A 10 conferences)

15 points for Conference Tournament Championships (ACC, Big Ten, Pac-12, Big 12, SEC, Big East, and A 10 conferences)

10 points for Sweet Sixteen Appearances

10 points for Regular Season Conference Championships (In the other conferences not mentioned in the group above)

7 points for Conference Tournament Championships (In the other conferences not mentioned in the group above)

5 points for winning a postseason tournament that was not the NCAA Tournament

5 points for every season with 30 or more wins

4 points for every season with 20 or more wins

3 points for post-season tournament championships other than the NCAA Tournament

2 points for every NCAA Tournament berth

*The coach had to be a head coach at a division 1 school from the period covering the seasons from 2015-2016 to 2019-2020.

Some may argue that there have been some amazing and outstanding coaches who have been left off of this list. For example, John Beilein took the Michigan basketball program to multiple national championship appearances as the head coach of the Wolverines but he no longer coaches at the collegiate level.

Other coaches had success over the past decade like former UConn’s head coach Kevin Ollie but he and others have been relinquished of their duties as the head coach of their former basketball program that they had much success at. However, there are current head coaches who are worthy and deserving of being ranked in the top 20 coaches over the time span of the past five seasons.

This list looks at the numbers, championships, and victories with the intention of avoiding outside bias and subjectivity. This distinct list of coaches is placed from twenty to one based on their accomplishments as head coaches of their programs. Let’s take a look at the rankings and see why they deserved their spot on this top 20 list. But before we do that, let’s take a look at the list of coaches who came close but did not qualify to be in the top 20 rankings of college coaches.