NCAA Basketball: Best head coaching hire from each of last 25 seasons

1998: Rick Barnes (Texas)

This was one of those years where the answer became pretty obvious when you consider the rest of the offseason. Arizona State, Iowa State, and Georgetown were among the major conference teams that made coaching moves, but nobody had as much success in the coming years as Barnes did at Texas.

This may have been 25 years ago, but Barnes was already no stranger to collegiate head coaching, having already served at George Mason, Providence, and Clemson. He’d been winning a lot of games at all three schools and was coming off three straight NCAA Tournament appearances with the Tigers, including a Sweet Sixteen run in 1997. Texas certainly needed his leadership after things ended poorly in scandal with Tom Penders.

The results for the Longhorns were immediate, who won the Big 12 regular season title in Barnes’ first season. He’d stay in Austin for 17 seasons and led the program to the Big Dance 16 times. The highlight was their trip to the Final Four in 2003, paired with a few more trips to the Elite Eight just a few seasons later. You could easily be disappointed with just five trips beyond the opening weekend of the Tournament, but Barnes won a lot of games with the Longhorns across nearly two decades of success.