Another year, another successful campaign for the Kentucky Wildcat’s John Calipari. He started this season with the top recruiting class in college basketball, won the National Title, and just sent six players to the NBA Draft, including four first rounders. It’s literally the Triple Crown of coaching. It’s been 45 years since been 45 seasons since Carl Yastrzemski nabbed the major league baseball triple crown so triple crown winners can be a long time coming. Look at horse racing. I’m sure that other coaches have pulled off the triple crown in college basketball coaching. But how about over a longer period. Say five years?
I decided to look at how Calipari’s last five seasons rank with the other top coaches in the NCAA and see if any coach could pull off the triple crown for a five year period. Surely a hot streak like that has not happened since maybe when Wooden ruled college hoops.
In addition to Calipari, I included North Carolina’s Roy Williams, Florida’s Billy Donovan, Kansas’s Bill Self, Duke’s Coach K, Louisville’s Rick Pitino and Indiana’s Tom Crean. All of the coaches except Crean are national championship winners and my list represent the last four title holders of the last five years as well as the coach of the preseason number one team.
The areas I looked at were the coaches success at sending players to the NBA, recruiting, and results on the court. If we want to look at academic records at the school, I went by the APR. All of the coaches have their schools eligible for the NCAA Tournament next year, so are at least getting the minimal job done there. For this reason, I did not include Commecticut’s Jim Calhoun as his team is not eligible for the NCAA next year.
Let’s see what I came up with.