NCAA Basketball: Ranking all 362 D-I head coaches for 2023-24 season
By Joey Loose
There are currently 362 D1 NCAA Basketball teams in the nation and each is led by a talented head coach. Let’s again endure the crazy task of ranking each of them in order!
The calendar has recently flipped over to October, meaning we’re just about a month away from the glorious beginning of a new NCAA basketball season. These past months have been filled to the brim with transfers, coaching moves, realignment rumors, and plenty of other rumblings, but we’re nearer and nearer to when the games are actually going to be played again. The college basketball news cycles seem to be endless regardless of the time of the year, but this is when things really start to get good.
We’re coming off another fantastic season in college basketball, one highlighted by Connecticut’s national championship and a few unexpected but impressive Final Four runs. Looking ahead, there’s no shortage of possibility in the sport, with dozens of programs looking to contend for national prominence in the months ahead. Anything could happen in this sport, especially with the talented players assembled by the head coaches of these programs.
Coaching college basketball is harder now than ever with the newfound mania of the Transfer Portal. Sometimes, the offseason isn’t just for recruiting new players but also trying to keep your own players in your program while also scouting other transfers. It’s an incredible balance for the coaches in this game, who deal with these same issues all the way from the Blue Blood programs to the oft-forgotten low majors.
The very backbone of coaching in this sport has changed mightily in recent years as Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jim Boeheim, and Jay Wright all stepped aside in the last three offseasons. A new crop of aspiring head coaches always pops up and some of these names are really making themselves known in recent years.
For a sixth straight year we are throwing ourselves into the coaching world and undergoing to the task of ranking every single head coach in this sport. We’re sitting at 362 head coaches at the D1 level and we’ll have background information on every single one today. It’s impossible to accurately or scientifically rank each of them, but we’ve given it our best shot. Nothing is random, and every consideration has been made. Attributes like coaching experience, success at other levels, recruiting prowess, and recent record all balance out in these selections and rankings.
It’s important to remember that there’s no specific formula here. A young head coach who’s won a lot of games and has postseason success can certainly sit ahead a more experienced coach. These rankings are by no means a perfect solution and there’s no doubt that all 362 D1 programs could see issue with where their coach has been placed. We leaned heavily on Sports Reference and information from nearly every school’s athletic sites to research and evaluate these coaches. This process took well over a month and was not taken lightly.
It’s very likely that anyone who reads through this entire piece learns something about a coach they may not have known existed. Even if you’re an expert at this sport, enjoy this look at every single head coach, from some rookie coaches at the bottom to the future Hall of Famers at the top.