NCAA basketball coaches: Who is the best of the best?

Last night John Rothstein made an absurd statement, and I quote “Amazing how competitive Rick Pitino has Louisville still far and away the best coach in the country.” John is a college sports writer for CBSsports and hosts an ESPN radio show in New York. Now while I do believe Pitino is still a great coach (he gets the most out of the least talent), I do not concur with Mr. Rothstein’s assessment. I decided to figure out who the best was based on cold hard facts and numbers.

Of course like all great debates — is the world flat? is time travel possible, was the 1996 UK team the best of all time? — there is not a definite answer…. UNTIL NOW.

Through years of research I HAVE discovered that the world is in fact round, that time travel is NOT possible (think about this. If time travel were possible, wouldn’t someone have met a time traveler from the future by now) and that 1996 team could have only been better if Rex Chapman was on the team. But one answer eluded me… who is the best coach?

Well… I believe we have quantified who that coach is:

We took 13 different values to determine who the best coach would be:
1) Wins
2) Losses
3) Win %
4) NCAA Tourney Wins
5) # of Conference Regular Season Championships Won
6) # of Conference Tournament Championships Won
7) Final 4 Appearances
8) National Championships
9) Players Turned Pro
10) NIT or Misses in Postseasons
11) Coach of the Year Within Conference
12) Coach of the Year Nationally
13) Average SOS

We determined who we thought were the best 20 Coaches in College Basketball:

We assigned a point log based on these coaches accomplishments:
1) Wins — 1 point
2) Losses — minus 1 point
3) Win % — factored above
4) NCAA Tourney Wins — 2.5 points / win
5) # of Conference Regular Season Championships Won — 5 points per championship
6) # of Conference Tournament Championships Won — 3 points per championship
7) Final 4 Appearances — 30 points for a final 4
8) National Championships — 50 points for a NC
9) Players Turned Pro — 2 points per player
10) NIT or Misses Postseasons — minus 3 points per appearance
11) Coach of the Year Within Conference — 2 points per award
12) Coach of the Year Nationally — 5 points per award
13) Average SOS — see below****

****So after much debate on how to factor in wins for a coach that coached in a Non-BCS conference, we decided that we should take the average SOS for each Coach in the last 10 years and factor that into the # wins for each school…

Here is how it all shook out!

**click to enlarge**

So what did we find out? Well quite a bit, and not really a lot. As sick as it makes me to say it, we learned that in every single aspect of coaching Coach K and Roy Williams are pretty “daggum” good. We learned that Calipari has some work to do (this was even counting his vacated Final 4 and 30+ win season). As much as that sucks… A couple of things make me happy: Pitino, Pearl & Crean have been God Awful over the last decade. Coach K has only won 1 Coach of the Year award and Gary Williams can still coach circles around most of the competition.

Here is your final list.

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