Power Ranking the Head Coaches Seeking First Natty in the 2025 Men's Final Four

From the moment the 2025 men's Final Four was finalized on Sunday, the discussion has been about how historically great this field is.

Rightfully so, we might add. As far as KenPom is concerned, the worst team still standing—Auburn with a +35.27 adjusted efficiency margin—is better than every single team from 2016-24 with the exceptions of 2021 Gonzaga (+36.48) and 2024 Connecticut (+36.43).

There's a good chance the winner will become the highest-rated champion in KenPom history, especially if it's Duke.

Great as this quartet is, though, all four head coaches are chasing what would be their first D-I national championship.

With only a handful of active coaches who have won at least one title, you can pretty well pencil in the eventual winner for right around the fifth-best coach in the sport when it's time to put together those rankings heading into next season.

Even the three who don't get to cut down the nets in San Antonio could land in the top 10 of that list, so how would you rank them heading into the forthcoming battle royale?

We're glad you asked.

4. Todd Golden, Florida Gators

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Career: 131-69 (.655 winning percentage), three NCAA tournaments in six years, first Final Four

Current Position: 74-33 (.692 winning percentage), 2025 SEC tournament champ

Between Florida opening the season outside the top 20 both in the AP poll and on KenPom and the reports by the school's student newspaper about a then-ongoing Title IX investigation by Florida University into Todd Golden involving stalking and sexual misconduct accusations, a place in the Final Four seemed unlikely.

The coach was cleared of any actionable Title IX violations in late January, though, and the Gators have been on a tear pretty much since then.

What hasn't come into question in the past few years, though, is Golden's ability to coach.

With Khalil Shabazz and Jamaree Bouyea leading the way, he put San Francisco back on the map in just three years at the helm. The season before taking the Florida job, he led the Dons to their first NCAA tournament in nearly a quarter century, as well as their first season of 23 or more wins since their self-imposed "death penalty" for NCAA violations in the 1980s.

And after Michael White left the cupboards in Gainesville pretty empty, it didn't take Golden long to turn the Gators back into a national contender.

By year No. 2, they had one of the most prolific offenses in the nation. They would have been a dangerous No. 7 seed in the dance if they hadn't lost starting center Micah Handlogten to a broken leg in the SEC championship. It still took a 102-100 game in the first round against Colorado to knock them out.

Losing two of the three leading scorers from that team did nothing to stifle this team's meteoric rise, climbing all the way to a No. 1 seed via road wins over Auburn and Alabama and an SEC tournament title.

Billy Donovan led the Gators to four Final Fours and two national championships, and up until now, they've never gotten over losing him to the NBA a decade ago, much like Butler's eternal quest to replace Brad Stevens. Regardless of how this run ends, they're holding out hope this 39-year-old is here for the long haul.

Golden is only fourth in this ranking, but he's going to easily rank as a top-20 coach in the nation heading into next season, even if they lose to Auburn on Saturday; probably somewhere in the Nos. 4-6 range if they win it all.

3. Jon Scheyer, Duke Blue Devils

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Career: 89-21 (.809 winning percentage), three NCAA tournaments in three years, first Final Four

Current Position: Same record as above, one-time ACC regular-season champ, two-time ACC tournament champ

Fair or not, Jon Scheyer has to contend with the same stigma John Calipari has endured for well over a decade: With talent like that, all you have to do is roll the ball out and stay out of their way.

It's never that easy, of course. There's no denying Cooper Flagg was special long before Scheyer started giving him pointers in Durham, but plenty of elite-recruiting head coaches never could figure out how to turn all of that talent into victories.

Nor has it ever been as easy to be the guy after the guy as Scheyer has made it seem in seamlessly replacing Mike Krzyzewski.

Scheyer took the reins as leader of the Blue Devils at the same time Kyle Neptune replaced Jay Wright at Villanova. And those coaching careers could not have gone in more opposite directions.

Scheyer is one win away from setting the record for most wins in first three seasons as a D-I head coach, while Neptune was only good enough to keep the Wildcats from completely falling to pieces before he got fired.

Of this bunch, though, Scheyer is definitely under the most pressure to win it all, as the Blue Devils are the clear favorite and might never again get the chance to put this much talent on the floor together.

If they were to lose for any reason other than just a horrendous shooting night by one of Flagg, Kon Knueppel or Tyrese Proctor, you can just about take it to the bank that the narrative would be one of Scheyer getting outclassed by either an older/wiser coach (Sampson or Pearl) or by his fellow not-yet-40-years-old coach who would be proclaimed the second coming of Billy Donovan (Golden).

If Duke does win it all, though, buckle up for the opposite extreme of people wondering if Scheyer is destined to one day surpass the legend he played and coached for, just like that legend surpassed his former coach and boss, Bobby Knight.

2. Bruce Pearl, Auburn Tigers

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Career: 477-223 (.681 winning percentage), 14 NCAA tournaments in 21 years, second Final Four

Current Position: 246-124 (.665 winning percentage), three-time SEC regular season champ, two-time SEC tournament champ, 11-5 in NCAA tournament

Much like Rick Pitino, Bruce Pearl churns out winning teams no matter where he lands.

Pearl's résumé of teams coached isn't quite as long (nor as international) as Pitino's, but he won a D-II national championship at Southern Indiana, where he spent nine seasons with an overall record (not counted toward his D-I career record above) of 231-46 (.834 winning percentage). The Screaming Eagles were a 10-win team the year before he took the job, but they won better than 75 percent of games played in each of his seasons there.

In 2001, he replaced eventual Wisconsin legend Bo Ryan as head coach of Milwaukee. The Panthers went .500 in each of Ryan's two seasons at the helm, as well as Pearl's first season. In years Nos. 2-4, though, they went 70-25 and crashed the Sweet 16 in 2005.

That Horizon League success opened the door to the Tennessee job, where after four consecutive tournament-less seasons under Buzz Peterson, Pearl immediately led them to a No. 2 seed. In fact, the Vols were a single-digit seed in all six of his years there before the infamous Aaron Craft barbecue recruiting violation led to his termination and a three-year show-cause penalty that pretty well relegated him to studio gigs for a few years, unable to do any sort of recruiting.

After his punishment had lapsed and he was allowed to legitimately coach again, he went to Auburn, which had missed 11 consecutive NCAA tournaments under three different coaches, posting an overall record 23 games below .500 while routinely bringing up the rear in the SEC.

It took a little more time for Pearl to work his magic there, but by year No. 4, Auburn was already about as good as it's ever been.

The Tigers made the Final Four in 2019 for the first time in program history. They made it to No. 1 in the AP poll for the first time in January 2022. And this year's team was its best yet.

Auburn has won at least 25 games in a season just seven times, six of those coming under Pearl's leadership in the past eight years.

And while that 2019 team crashed the Final Four with relentless turnover-forcing defense and ceaseless three-point shooting, this year's team is just super efficient on both ends of the floor, a seven man-rotation consisting of six grown men and one free-wheeling freshman whose permanent green light could be what wins (or loses) them a title.

Pearl has always been able to adapt to the strengths of the roster at his disposal, and finally winning it all against this remaining field would feel like something of a lifetime achievement award.

1. Kelvin Sampson, Houston Cougars

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Career: 723-310 (.700 winning percentage), 21 NCAA tournaments in 32 years, third Final Four

Current Position: 298-83 (.782 winning percentage), six-time regular-season champ (four AAC, two Big 12), 18-6 in NCAA tournament, eight consecutive seasons with eight losses or fewer

Like Bruce Pearl, Kelvin Sampson is well-traveled, has won at every stop of his career and was forced to leave the ranks of the college coaching world for a while due to recruiting violations.

[Though, if we can bring up Rick Pitino again, these violations were nothing compared to the stuff that was alleged to be happening during Louisville's recruiting visits in the 2010s. Sampson was just calling/texting recruits when he wasn't supposed to be.]

Sampson first found success as just a kid in his 20s at NAIA's Montana Tech, winning three Frontier Conference championships in his four years of coaching the Orediggers. (Epic name, by the way.)

He made his foray into the D-I ranks with Washington State in 1987. It took a few years to gain traction, but he built a winning program by year No. 4 and a tournament-bound team in year No. 7.

After that, he went to Oklahoma for a run of 11 NCAA tournament appearances in 12 years, including reaching the Final Four in 2002 before losing to the team that would hire him four years later, Indiana.

It was here that the recruiting violations came to a head, lasting less than two seasons with the Hoosiers, despite a .741 winning percentage.

Sampson then spent more than five years in the NBA as an assistant with the Milwaukee Bucks and Houston Rockets before finding his way back to the college game with the Houston Cougars in 2014, where he has built a defensive juggernaut on an annual basis.

From 1985-2017, Houston had not won a single NCAA tournament game, immediately eliminated in the four years that it did make the Dance in between Phi Slama Jama and whatever we're calling Sampson's era at helm.

But now, they're a Gonzaga-like constant contender that just can't quite win it all, despite always being one of the winningest, most efficient teams in the country.

Over the past eight seasons, the Cougars have gone 242-43 overall (.849 winning percentage), going from an AAC wrecking ball to a Big 12 wrecking ball without skipping a beat. They've finished top 18 on KenPom in each of those eight years—top five in each of the past five—and have made it at least to the Sweet 16 in six consecutive tournaments.

Sampson's teams live and breathe toughness. Right after they beat Tennessee into submission in the Elite Eight, the first thing he wanted to talk about was the 100-yard sprints they were running on the baseball field in June while no one was watching, preparing them to, if nothing else, never get out-hustled.

Sampson is already one of the elite coaches in the sport, arguably neck-and-neck with Mark Few as the best to have never won a title. That could change if Houston becomes the first team to win a national championship played in its home state since UCLA did it in 1975.