So there you have it. Looking at the data, John Calipari has won the Triple Crown of NCAA College Basketball Coaches and it was not really close. I know that this was not scientific, but let’s handle some of the criticism that is sure to follow.
Some may argue that Calipari is just a recruiter, but he has produced the results as well, which leads to positioning his players for the NBA Draft. People point to Coach K as the top college coach because his players stay at Duke, hence the lower NBA draft score, but shouldn’t his results be off the charts? Coach K may be the best at getting his players to over achieve, and while that is commendable, is not really something that can be measured. If you say Coach K get the most out of his players is akin to saying he is not a great recruiter. Some people may think that Calipari’s Draft and Recruiting scores are inflated due to the fact that his players stay one year. But once again, the results are there. I would think that getting the same results with new players every year is a tougher coaching job than having players in the same system for 3-4 years.
No matter how you spin it, Calipari has been the most dominating coach in the last five years. You can’t argue the numbers. Here is how the rest of the coaches weighed out. I assigned 2 points to each category position to come up with the final weighting, so Calipari finishing first in recruiting is 12 points, second place would be 12, and so on all the way to 0 points for last. Here is the final coaches tally with their category ranking points determining the placement and the points earned in parentheses. Calipari ran away with the triple crown while Self and Williams had a literal tie for second place.
1. JOHN CALIPARI – 36 – (114)
2. ROY WILLIAMS – 26 – (66)
2. BILL SELF – 26 – (66)
4. COACH K – 16 – (51)
5. BILLY DONOVAN – 14 – (36)
6. RICK PITINO – 8 – (30)
7. TOM CREAN – 0 – (13)