NCAA Basketball: Ranking all 68 head coaches in 2021 NCAA Tournament
By Joey Loose
52. Darian DeVries (Drake)
0 NCAA Tournaments
Even after falling in the MVC Tournament to Loyola, the Bulldogs heard their name called on Selection Sunday, with the upstart DeVries heading to his first NCAA Tournament as head coach. He spent nearly two decades as an assistant at Creighton and has plenty of postseason experience, but the work he’s done at Drake has been phenomenal. He’s won no fewer than 20 games each of his first three seasons, and this year’s team was one of the final unbeaten teams in college basketball.
51. Mike Boynton (Oklahoma State)
0 NCAA Tournaments
It’s taken some time for things to take off at Oklahoma State for Boynton in his first head coaching job, but the former aide to Frank Martin and Brad Underwood really struck gold this year with Cade Cunningham. It’s too early to tell how things will go for Boynton long term, but if he can recruit well and keep building this thing, then there are some bright days ahead for these Cowboys.
50. Isaac Brown (Wichita State)
0 NCAA Tournaments
When the coaching career of Gregg Marshall came to a startling conclusion, Wichita State was left in quite a bit of limbo. Enter in Brown, who has stabilized the program and done phenomenal work in his first season leading the Shockers. To win the AAC regular-season title and lead Wichita State to the NCAA Tournament is a fantastic start to what will no doubt be a great coaching career.
49. Patrick Ewing (Georgetown)
0 NCAA Tournaments
Nobody saw this coming even a week ago, but Ewing has led his Hoyas into the NCAA Tournament for the first time since he took over as coach four seasons ago. They blitzed through the Big East Tournament and pulled off multiple upsets. It’s easy to have been greatly underwhelmed by Ewing’s performance these last few seasons, but this fantastic run through the conference tournament changes the perspective. A victim of upset many times in recent memory, does Georgetown have another few upsets in them?