The Top Ten Coaches in College Basketball

Feb 9, 20183 min read

A constant argument among college sports fans has us debating the best coach in college basketball. The big names of college basketball coaching are arguably bigger than the coaching names of any other sport. Roy Williams, Coach K, John Calipari, Bill Self, Tom Izzo to name a few, but who is the best?. These rankings will take a look at the total career, as well as recent success (past 5 years) and success in the tournament.

Without keeping you waiting lets jump right into it. I will give my "honorable mentions" below and then you can see the list of 10 in the slideshow below. The honorable mentions are in no particular order and are a few coaches that you could see on the list in the coming years as some of the older coaches may retire.

Honorable mentions

Tony Bennett - Virginia

The coach of one of the best teams in the country this year, Tony Bennett and his Virginia Cavaleirs are a serious threat to win it all. The only thing keeping Bennett off the top ten list is the fact that he is rather new to the game and has yet to get over the hump in the NCAA tournament. This could be the year that the Cavaliers and Tony Bennett make the final four and he is a guy who will probably be on the list in a couple of years.

Gregg Marshall - Wichita State

Marshall unlike Bennett has made the final four in his career when he took the Shockers there in 2013 only to lose to the eventual national champion Louisville Cardinals. Marshall has had some unheard of numbers in the regular season but that has been in a conference that has put up little fight. With Wichita State making the move to the American Athletic Conference this year we will see how the Shockers and Marshall can handle the increased competition.

Matt Painter - Purdue

Similar to Tony Bennett, Painter has his team as one of the best in the nation this year. Painter has had an increase in success almost year by year and if it continues this year you might see the Purdue Boilermakers making a late run in the tournament. Painter could be the next top dog in the Big 10 depending on how things turn out with Izzo at Michigan State but either way he looks to have built a great program with a lot of long term success to come.

James Whitford - Ball State

Ok, this one is with bias. I went to Ball State and I can say Whitford is a coach you may hear as a name in coaching searches in the coming years. A former assistant to Sean Miller at Arizona, Whitford has taken Ball State from back to back seasons with 5 and 7 wins to winning their division crown two years in a row with 21+ wins. The Ball State Cardinals knocked off at the time #9 Notre Dame and are a serious threat to win the MAC and make a run to the NCAA tournament.

Now for the list. I am not going to give an argument for each coach I am just going to post stats, these are my opinions and I am sure there will be many other opinions out there so please tweet at me or comment on this post wherever you see at and let me know what you think and why. My twitter is @Ryanmcc09 and you can tweet at No Huddle Sports @_NoHuddleSports. Just a disclaimer I did google search for most of these stats so if there is something wrong please direct all complaints to Google and the conference championship championships are only the tournament championships and I am not considering regular season championships.

#10. Sean Miller - Arizona

Record: 359-118

Conference championships: 3

Final Four appearances: 0

National Championships: 0