The college basketball season has already provided its fair share of exciting moments and entertaining games, and we’re still over a month away from March Madness. It’s important to remember that all games matter in this sport, even the seemingly meaningless nonconference action in November. In fact, the real work begins long before the on-court action and that’s exactly what we’re thinking about today.
No team seals their fate before the games start counting, but what happens in the offseason is very important. With the ever-changing climate in this sport, it’s important to have a great coach and coaching staff in place for a program to be truly successful. The advent of NIL and the Transfer Portal seems to be chasing old heads from this game while also allowing many other coaches to truly shine.
Our precise focus today is on the coaches that are really standing out this season. We’re not looking at who’s the best based on their career or what they’ve done these last few weeks, but which are the most worthy to be considered for the national Coach of the Year awards. There’s no distinct formula to figure this out, but we’re looking at coaches exceeding expectations, those who are excelling in their first seasons at new programs, and other ones that are revitalizing their careers or their programs.
With 364 D1 programs, there are certainly a lot of coaches to consider but we’ve narrowed down our national list to twenty. The attention is obviously on those making an impact at the national level, meaning some really solid mid-major coaches weren’t quite on our radar. We’ve also left off a few power conference coaches having really nice seasons, but there are only twenty names and there’s been a lot of good in the first few months of the season. Without further ado, let’s start running through these names and figure out who should get these national awards in a few months.