Everyone knows coaching is one of the most influential professions in today's sports marketplace. However, I think the increase in influence and the role of the coach change drastically between college and professional sports.
College basketball coaches are responsible not only for winning games, but also for nurturing their players into successful adults and possible NBA basketball players. Combine that with managing the fragile psyche of college kids and their penchant for teenage behavior, and you can see why their shelf life is so short.
I want to pay homage to those men in today's game who have been able to balance all of the aspects of coaching, and remain consistent winners. There will be a few criteria however.
1. When I say college coaches "today", I really mean here and now. I know Coach K has had an incredible career, and is deservedly one of the best coaches in all of college basketball. But that is not news to anyone, so I will only be analyzing coaches track records over the past five years.
2. The basis of my rankings will be a combination of winning, recruiting, and developing the players. For example, John Beilein does not always recruit top talent, yet his teams, with the exception of this past Michigan team, have always overachieved.
Here goes:
5. John Calipari-Memphis
Coach "Cal" has been a household name in college basketball for a long time now, but it appears as though his coaching prowess has just begun to peak.
Since the 2003-2004 season, Coach Calipari has a record of 148-34 (.813) and has followed an ugly NIT season in 2004-2005, with back-to-back trips to the Elite Eight, and of course, this past year's run to the national championship game.
On March 8th, following a big victory over UAB Calipari became the second coach in all of college basketball (joining Adolph Rupp) to record 30 wins in three consecutive seasons.
The nay-sayers of Calipari argue that he plays in a conference with far fewer good teams. That his record in these recent years with Memphis has been inflated by the quality of the opponents he has faced, or lack thereof.
There is certainly merit to this argument, but in recent years, Memphis and Calipari have shown a commitment to facing a grueling non-conference schedule, and still win those games easily.
Not only that, but no one should blame Calipari for being able to recruit top-tier talent to a less prominent conference with less TV exposure. Instead, he should be lauded for his ability to convince players like Tyreke Evans to spurn hometown Villanova for far away Memphis.
But what really seperates Calipari from the coaches who were left off this list is his testicular fortitude, and his ability to constantly motivate and push his team to greater success.
When I say testicular fortitude I mean that Calipari is one of the only coaches who is not afraid to shake things up, even after the past has resulted in great success.
Calipari's implementation of the dribble-drive motion offense this year was gutsy. His team was returning almost everyone from the previous season, and it was adding the best freshman in the country. The Tigers were in everybody's preseason Final Four.
That didn't matter. Cal continued to tweak his offense to best fit the personnel he used, and it became a revelation. Promoting the idea of breaking the defender down individually and cutting and finding open shots off of the penetration. Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts were perfect for this offense, and excelled in it.
Only Cal would have the guts to pull off that kind of move.
4. John Thompson III-Georgetown
If only Georgetown could have just skipped the Craig Esherick era and gone from one Thompson to another, we would be talking about the Hoyas as a dynasty based on the results JT3 has had since he took over the program in 2004.
After leaving a Princeton program where he was fresh off his 3rd Ivy League title, Thompson inherited a Georgetown team that was in shambles, and quickly rebuilt them into a national power, by implementing a new offense, and showing a new commitment to keeping local recruits at home.
His record with Georgetown is 100-36 (.735) and even more impressive is that in just three seasons, Thompson took Georgetown from the NIT to the Big East Champion with a mix of Esherick's recruits, and his own.
Now, the most impressive part about his resume is that he has won back-to-back regular season titles in the Big East, a conference that many pundits strongly believe to be the best in the country year in and year out.
His ability to nurture Esherick's recruits and develop his own only proves that he can not only recruit but also teach. Players like Johnathan Wallace and Roy Hibbert were inconsistent until they worked out a niche in Thompson's offense, where they excelled.
It took Bill Self and Roy Williams years before they reached their first final four, and if it wasn't for the incredible shooting machine Stephen Curry, Thompson might have back to back final fours on his resume.
Now he has proved he can recruit out of state. Thompson swooped into SEC country and plucked Greg Monroe out of Louisiana, one of the top big men prospects in the entire nation.
Throw Monroe in with Henry Sims, another top ranked big man, and Jason Clark, a highly regarded shooting guard and both nearby products and the Hoyas have themselves another strong class to add to last year's guard-heavy class which included Austin Freeman and Chris Wright.
Don't expect Georgetown to give up their stranglehold on the Big East so easily next season, and Thompson is a main reason why.
3. Roy Williams-North Carolina
Not only has Williams added the elusive national championship to his resume, but he continues to use the prestige of North Carolina, and has used his country charm to consistently pull in a ridiculous amount of talent as the Tar Heels reload instead of rebuild.
He just finished his 5th season at his alma mater after leaving Kansas fans with a bad taste in their mouths, and has been fantastic in his seasons at Chapel Hill already.
Williams has compiled a record of 142-33 (.811) at North Carolina and has been to the NCAA tournament every season since being hired, including a National Championship in 2005, the Elite Eight in 2007, and a Final Four appearance this past season.
One of the major reasons Williams has had such success is that he has been able to use the North Carolina name to bring a silly amount of talent into the program. According to Rivals.com, since his first class in 2004 he has brought in seven five-star prospects, seven four-star prospects, and three three-star prospects, not including J.R. Smith who jumped straight to the NBA, and his class of 2009, which already boasts two five-star's and two four-stars.
Considering he is always working with teams with extremely high expectations, he needs to make sure he is an excellent motivator, and he has shown some of his strategies to combating complacency. Such as taking out all five starters right away, yelling at his players right on the sideline, and nit-picking after games about ways to improve.
Also include that his secondary break at every stop is legendary, and if he gets Wayne Ellington and/or Tywon Lawson back his team will be the pre-season #1 team for the 2nd year in a row shows Williams must be doing something right.
2. Billy Donovan-Florida
Gator fans all over the country just spit out the water they were drinking. How can a coach who is still fresh off back-to-back national titles not be the #1 coach in basketball today?
Well, Gator fans if it means anything to you, it was an extremely difficult and heart-wrenching decision, but in the end, Donovan was done in by the fact he has had incredible talent to work with since joining Florida, and the fact that all of his players didn't jump to the NBA certainly helped him grab his 2nd NCAA title.
His record in the past five seasons in Gainesville is a more than respectable 136-31 (.814), and of course he has the two national titles, but in his other three seasons he has 0 trips to the Sweet 16, and has only made it out of the 1st round once, including a trip to the NIT this past season which doomed him.
I understand that his players staying might have had something to do with their coach, but this is the same guy who almost jumped ship to the Orlando Magic the following season, so I am not sure if loyalty was why Noah and Horford and Brewer all stayed.
He is a fantastic coach. He is a tireless recruiter who is supplementing last year's top 10 class with another top 15 class this season, and he is incredibly good at making in-game and halftime adjustments to give his team a better chance to win.
Don't get me wrong, if I was an athletic director in D-1 athletics I would take Billy Donovan as my head basketball coach any day of the year. But he fell just short in my rankings.
Another plus for Donovan is that he is still very young, and so he will be able to rebuild Florida again in no time, although the early-enrollment attrition from this past season could dull the shine of the incoming recruiting class.
1. Ben Howland-UCLA
There are so many different reasons I could choose as my top reason why Howland is the best coach in college basketball today.
But, the number one reason Howland is the best coach is how he has revitalized the once stagnant UCLA program in such a short period of time.
The Steve Lavin years in Westwood were a disaster. Lavin was incredulously unable to convince high caliber high school players to play for the Bruins, and he suffered some embarrassing losses that were unheard of for a program with so much history, and in 2002-2003, Lavin and the Bruins finished 10-19 for the first losing season for UCLA in 54 years.
Enter Ben Howland.
Left with a dearth of talent thanks to the incredible ability of Lavin to NOT get good players to play for one of the nation's most respected college basketball programs. Howland struggled his first year, finishing 11-17.
But in his first year recruiting, his class consisted of Jordan Farmar, Arron Afflalo, Lorenzo Mata, and Josh Shipp, all of whom were key contributors to the Bruins success over the past few years.
Since then the recruiting has not been as heralded, but Howland has turned less talented players in downright superstars. Russell Westbrook was just a three-star recruit, and now he is most likely a lottery pick.
Howland's record with UCLA now stands at 126-45 (.736). But the most impressive piece of the his resume is UCLA's three consecutive trips to the Final Four, something that has been been replicated only rarely.
The one knock on Howland of course is that he has never won a National Championship. and has only been to the championship game once in those three years.
It pains Howland I am sure, but he should be proud that very, very few coaches have achieved the sustained success that Howland has achieved over the past three years.
Whats truly scary is that although the Bruins are losing Kevin Love and Russell Westbrook Howland has signed the #1 recruiting class for 2008 according to Rivals.com, and so they aren't very far off from returning to the top of the heap, if at all.
Howland's trademark is tough, in your face, man-to-man defense, which seemingly all of his teams have embodied, and what has made Russell Westbrook such a hot commodity.
He preaches the fundamentals, his players buy into the scheme, and he has had success...that's why he's the best.
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