We’re nearly back into full swing with another thrilling season of college basketball. For a four month span, hundreds of programs at multiple levels of this sport are putting their all into their time on the court, but the hard work in the sport clearly transcends beyond those actual games. A lot of the work goes in during the offseason and the time between games and it’s the important work of the coaches that puts these programs in their position.
The difference between a good head coach and a great head coach can create a major difference in a college basketball program. We see this in effect every single season. New hires can astound and turn programs around while some fall flat on their faces in new opportunities. At the same time, some of these leaders establish themselves at the same school and build these programs that have been contenders for an extended period of time.
If you couldn’t tell by now, today’s focus is all about the head coaches in this sport and even with recent changes it’s still a sport full of legends. These last twelve months alone saw Tony Bennett, Leonard Hamilton, Jim Larranaga, and Bruce Pearl put a halt to their own coaching careers, but that’s part of the beautiful cyclic nature of this sport. There’s always someone new waiting in the wings to put their impact on these teams.
However, the assignment has never been more difficult with the changes and new developments in the sport. The expansion of NIL and the transfer portal have made recruiting a full-time job for these coaches and their staffs, not only having to find brilliant freshmen talent but to basically be recruiting their own players to stay in town each and every offseason. Sometimes these coaches are putting together entirely new rosters with barely any notice and expected to go out and win games.
Today we’re asking ourselves what separates the good coaches from the great and the answer is quite complicated. While it might easy to take a closer look at some of the best active leaders in the game, a list that looks dramatically different than even five years ago, we’re instead taking on a much bigger project again today.
This mark the eighth year in a row that we will be ranking and examining the work of every single active head coach in college basketball. You’ll find mention and examination of all 365 sitting head coaches at the D1 level. There absolutely does not exist a perfect way to rank nearly four hundred coaches against each other, but once again we’ve given it our best try with a few different criteria.
There is no scientific formula or logical argument present throughout this list, it’s simply a balance of experience and success. Just because a team had a better performance last season doesn’t necessarily mean their coach will be higher compared to another school. This is a delicate balance between a coach’s entire history and what they’ve accomplished recently. Surely we see the importance of things like winning in the postseason.
A few new or young head coaches have leapt their way up these rankings, but it’s important to remember the entire body of work. This isn’t specifically a ranking of who a program would want to hire right now but a balanced consideration of everything they’ve done through their career, with a particular focus on recent accomplishments. Information was gathered from various team websites, Sports Reference, and other media but this is a completely independent list that took significant research for every single spot.
You might find yourself learning something new today, perhaps about a coach from a less discussed mid-major league. Maybe you’ll discover the next big thing in this sport; the coach who could be the next menace in the Big 12 or SEC. Either way, we’re getting right into these rankings, starting with a crew of rookie head coaches all the way to the Hall of Famers at the very end.