B/R CBB Community: Who Will Be the Greatest Active Coach Once Coach K Retires?

Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Michigan State’s Tom Izzo before the 2015 Final FourDavid J. Phillip/Associated Press

You might have heard that this will be Mike Krzyzewski’s final season as the head coach of the Duke men’s basketball program. That storyline is going to be inescapable this weekend when North Carolina visits Cameron Indoor Stadium for the final home game of Coach K’s career. It is also going to be a constant talking point throughout the NCAA tournament, where his final game on the sideline could be in any round of the dance.

But at some point in the next 3-5 weeks, Coach K will become former Coach K, joining Roy Williams in the land of retirement and—for the first time in a long time—opening up a legitimate debate about who is the best active coach in men’s college hoops.

There are plenty of great candidates to answer that question. So many, in fact, that we wanted to let the B/R app users weigh in with their answers and their fire emojis as opposed to just putting together my own personal rankings.

And you fine folks did not disappoint.

Here were the most popular responses, in no particular order.

(We didn’t have room to discuss all of them, but other worthy candidates mentioned at least a couple of times included Tony Bennett, Scott Drew, Mark Few and Bob Huggins.)

Cheaters Sometimes Prosper

Kentucky’s John CalipariMichael Woods/Associated Press

@blublood72: CAL!

@jcoffey1972: Pitino

@tettra: John Calipari

@jameskissane1: Rick Pitino

@ke_knee_whit: Coach Cal no doubt

@MarshallTillman: Pitino

@Dakidd0821: Coach Calipari

Maybe you see an ethical dilemma with putting either John Calipari or Rick Pitino at No. 1 on the list of active coaches, since each man has had not one but two Final Four appearances vacated.

But we can’t not mention two of the winningest active coaches.

Take out his 10-18 “rookie season” at Massachusetts, and Calipari had a 77.5 winning percentage in seven years with the Minutemen, a 78.5 winning percentage in his nine years at Memphis and a 78.5 winning percentage thus far in 13 seasons with Kentucky. The first two were vacated, but he took each of those programs to a Final Four with a total of six national semifinals in his career.

And we can’t overstate the fact that Calipari was the first one to go all-in on the one-and-done model. He started that approach at Memphis, but he immediately turned Kentucky into a superhighway from high school to the NBA, forcing other coaches—including Krzyzewski—to follow suit. Critics initially said that it wasn’t a championship model, but that Anthony Davis and Michael Kidd-Gilchrist-led 2011-12 title team is still one of the best of the past quarter century.

Calipari is one of just five active coaches with at least 800 career D-1 wins (including vacated wins), and Pitino is one of the others.

Like Calipari, the incredible thing about Pitino is that he has been successful at a bunch of different schools, leading each of Boston, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and Iona to at least one NCAA tournament. Calipari and Pitino are the only coaches to lead three different programs to a Final Four, and Pitino is the only coach (active or retired) to win a national championship with multiple schools.

Again, a lot of those accolades have been vacated by the NCAA, but they still happened. And no matter how you feel about their moral character, you don’t win that consistently at that many schools without knowing something about X’s and O’s.

January, February, Izzo

Michigan State’s Tom IzzoCharlie Neibergall/Associated Press

@rs60: Izzo by a wide margin

@bigdaddyfluff: Certainly Tom Izzo is in that conversation

@BrutallyHonezt: Izzo and that’s coming from a Michigan man. SMDH.

@LouPratt: Probably Izzo. If he was a better recruiter, Mstate would be a dynasty.

I wasn’t sure if Tom Izzo would get much love here because A) his only national championship came all the way back in 2000, and B) the 2021-22 Spartans appear to be on a quest to set some kind of record for most losses suffered in February and March by an at-large team.

But perhaps thanks in part to the app prompt including a gif of Izzo, Michigan State’s longtime head coach might have been the most mentioned name among the responses.

That’s with good reason, too. Izzo has been to eight Final Fours in his 27-year career with the Spartans. Unless Pitino somehow gets Iona to a national semifinal, Izzo will be in sole possession of the most Final Four appearances among active head coaches once Coach K is gone.

Izzo has also led Michigan State to 23—soon to be 24—consecutive NCAA tournaments and has never had a losing season in his career.

And as @LouPratt alluded to above, he has done this largely without top-tier recruits. Per 247 Sports, Izzo has signed just nine 5-star recruits in the past two decades, only two of whom—Shannon Brown in 2003 and Jaren Jackson in 2017—were of the top-10, can’t-miss variety.

Let’s not pretend Izzo has been hurting for talent, though. Only nine 5-stars, but 23 guys who ranked top-50 in their class and another 18 who landed in the Nos. 51-100 range. That’s an average of slightly better than two top-100 guys per year, most of whom stick around for four seasons. He’s not exactly guiding walk-ons to 30-win campaigns.

But Michigan State is always a factor. Maybe he isn’t the singular No. 1, but Izzo at least belongs on the new Mount Rushmore of active coaches.

The Muss Bus

Arkansas’ Eric MusselmanMichael Woods/Associated Press

@codysimpson Eric Musselmen (sp) should be in conversation

@lawhawg: Eric Effin Musselman

First things first, no. Absolutely not. There are seven active coaches with at least 700 career wins, and Eric Musselman is only in his seventh season as a head coach. I admire the throngs of Arkansas fans who use our app, but y’all are out of your minds.

That said, I have mad respect for the Muss Bus.

Before he got his start at Nevada in 2015-16, the Wolf Pack were a mess, going 36-58 over the previous three seasons under David Carter. But Musselman turned things around overnight, winning 24 games in his first season before reaching the NCAA tournament in each of the next three years, thriving as the transfer-portal whisperer.

Similar story at Arkansas. The Razorbacks were nowhere near that bad when they hired Musselman, but let’s just say Mike Anderson didn’t become the St. John’s coach because of his incredible success in Fayetteville. Musselman won 20 games in his first season, got the Hogs to an Elite Eight as a No. 3 seed in year No. 2 and it sure is starting to feel like the sky is the limit this March.

Musselman has won at least 20 games in each of his seven years as a head coach. If he were Brad Stevens’ age when he left Butler for the Boston Celtics (36), he would be front and center on any list of up-and-coming superstars. Instead, he is 57 and should have a nice run at Arkansas for the next 10-15 years.

The Wright Man for the Job

Villanova’s Jay WrightDerik Hamilton/Associated Press

@thegodfaubel: It’s probably Jay Wright and/or Bill Self

@fox10: Jay Wright. Two titles at a small catholic school

@Midnite908NJ: Jay Wright Villanova

It’s hard to argue with the two national championships. Jay Wright’s 2016 and 2018 title teams were outstanding, getting 10 of their combined 12 tournament wins by double digits. And those were just seasons No. 2 and 4 of an incredible five-year stretch in which the Wildcats were a top contender to win it all each March.

When the “old” Big East fell apart in 2013, Wright and Villanova became a juggernaut in the new conference, winning at least 72 percent of league games played in each of the past (including current) nine seasons. It was when that schism happened that Villanova became the remarkably efficient, three-point happy offense that we know and love today.

Perhaps most incredible about Wright’s consistent success is that he keeps doing it predominantly with guys who spend 3-5 years in the program.

Every now and then there’s an Omari Spellman who goes pro after one season, or an Eric Paschall who comes to Villanova via the transfer portal. But Villanova is somehow in a constant state of veteran leaders like Ryan Arcidiacono, Josh Hart, Jalen Brunson and Collin Gillespie, who seem to have more years of eligibility than Perry Ellis ever had at Kansas.

Wright just keeps finding and developing these guys who play the “Villanova Way.” Until he retires or that pipeline runs dry, a third national championship is always on the table.

Don’t be Un-Self-ish

Kansas’ Bill SelfRay Carlin/Associated Press

@sjwalker25: Bill Self

@trevoragearhart: Rock Chalk

@ajones146: Cal or Self. Nobody else including Izzo is in the conversation.

There were considerably more people who expressed their support for Bill Self, but most of them responded with gifs.

And, for whatever it’s worth, Self would be my pick.

Yes, there have been allegations and violations levied against Self and Kansas in recent years. However, I’m not the MLB Hall of Fame, and nothing has (yet) been taken away from Self. So, I’ll just be focusing on his mighty impressive career numbers.

Self has been the head coach of a No. 4 seed or better in 20 consecutive NCAA tournaments. On March 13, that streak will extend to 21 years. We can pretty safely say it should be 22 years, because Kansas was on track to become the No. 1 overall seed in 2020 before COVID-19 had other plans.

In his four seasons at Oral Roberts, the Golden Eagles win total steadily improved from six to 10 to 18 to 21. He then went to Tulsa and had a similar three-year trajectory of 19, 23 and 32 before getting the Illinois job in 2000. He has a career winning percentage of 76.7, which spikes to 80.0 percent if you take out the four years he spent trying to put Oral Roberts on the map.

While 80.0 isn’t quite Mark Few’s 83.6 winning percentage with Gonzaga, it’s just plain ridiculous that Self is that close to Few while spending most of his career in the Big 12, winning regular-season title after regular-season title in a league that would mercilessly destroy the WCC if they ever put together an ACC/B1G or B12/SEC type of conference showdown.

The one knock against Self in any ranking of head coaches is that all his regular-season success hasn’t amounted to a whole lot in the NCAA tournament. He did win a title in 2008 and got to two other Final Fours (2012 and 2018), but you would think a perennial top-four seed and a nine-time No. 1 seed would fare a little bit better than that in March.

But sometimes that’s just the way the cookie crumbles in the tourney. And even if you count Rick Pitino’s vacated 2013 title at Louisville, he and Jay Wright are the only active college basketball coaches with multiple national championships with two each. At least Self did get one, and he always seems to be in the mix for that next one.

Kerry Miller covers men’s college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.