38. Tad Boyle, Colorado (51-77-43-77-77): Before Boyle came to Boulder, the Buffs had just two NCAA tournament appearances in forty years. Four years later they've gone to three straight tournaments. You have to wonder whether Boyle was lucky to pluck Andre Roberson and Spencer Dinwiddie out of high school or if it was the other way around. Does Boyle have the ability to consistently mold less heralded high school recruits into winning teams? It's a tough job. You can't put Boyle much lower just because of the number of wins, but this type of coach needs to prove more before I can fully buy in.
37. Tim Miles, Nebraska (78-95-130-44-104): Miles has spent a long career going from place to place - five stops in 20 years as a head coach ranging from the NAIA up to Nebraska. He's got a lively social media presence on twitter, and in just two plus years in Lincoln he's done a lot to bring #nebrasketball into the lexicon of college hoops junkies. He's never won an NCAA tournament game, but his teams have shown continued improvement everywhere he's coached.
36. Jim Boeheim, Syracuse (15-5-10-16-70): There's no one in college basketball, not even his holiness down in Durham, who grates as much as Boeheim. It's amazing that if you google "Jim Boeheim whine", you get over twenty year's worth of links right on the first page or two. He's 70, so you might think that would have worn off by now, but nah uh. If you hire Boeheim, you're getting a "legend", but not a Coach K/Dean Smith type of legend. Boeheim is a winner, but he's still just a basketball coach.
35. Jim Larranaga, Miami (24-50-14-69-63): Everyone remembers the magical run nine years ago when Larranaga led George Mason to the final four, beating heavyweights and marking the first time in over 25 years that a "mid-major" team made it to the season's last weekend. What's more impressive to me is how consistently his teams at Mason won. In fourteen seasons as the program's head coach, only his first saw them finish under .500 in the conference. Then in 2013, in his second year at Miami, the Hurricanes swept the ACC regular season and tournament championships. And that's at a program where "also-ran" would be generous. After losing everyone from that team, he's already rebuilt Miami into a tournament contender again. The one negative is that he's 65. That's really too old for consideration near the top except for the giants of the game.
34. Andy Enfield, USC (170-93-163-155): Enfield's claim to fame is two wins in March, a pretty wife and a lot of dunks. That's sizzle. His next move is to show some substance. It's a win now world so Enfield becomes something of a forgotten man. We look at USC still loitering at the bottom of the Pac-12 and think "he hasn't done anything there yet", only to be reminded that this is year two and sometimes rebuilding doesn't happen overnight, regardless of how good you are. There's little question that Enfield was a good hire for USC precisely because that's a program that needs the sizzle, but at the highest levels, you'd have to wait and see, right?
33. Chris Mack, Xavier (39-48-77-59-22): I get the sense that Mack's star has probably fallen a little bit. Four years ago his team had won back to back A-10 regular season titles, three NCAA tournament games in two years and fifty games overall. The past two years the Musketeers had a tournament miss and then a trip to Dayton for the First Four (where they lost). Xavier is in the Big East now and has a sizeable fanbase. It's a program that expects to win. Mack has generally done a fine job of that, but not to the level where he's probably seen as a rising star in the coaching ranks anymore.
32. Bob Huggins, West Virginia (18-49-125-68-15): Ah, Huggy Bear. After a couple of mediocre seasons, Huggins has reinvented West Virginia with a pressure defensive style that's completely unlike what he's done in the past. It's worked, and West Virginia is back in the top 25. Maybe this is the start of a new era for Huggins, or maybe it's a one year aberration. More important is the reputation that he carries. You can argue about how much that's deserved, but it doesn't change its existence.
31. Johnny Jones, LSU (180-165-100-58-38): If you had a coach who could land the #1 high school recruit in the country, that would be a plus, right? Especially one who isn't local and especially when you're still rebuilding your program. Jones did just that by landing Ben Simmons of Australia (by way of Monteverde Academy) in next year's class. After 11 years at North Texas (and one prior at Memphis), Jones is not a rookie. He comes with a reputation as a recruiter, dating back to his time as an assistant on Dale Brown's staff at Memphis when the team had Shaq and Chris Jackson. It's not like LSU hasn't recruited well even in recent years, but Jones has a great chance to build his program in a wide-open-after-Kentucky SEC.
30. Jamie Dixon, Pitt (): Dixon's teams are usually efficiency and regular season darlings without much success in the NCAA tournament. Pitt won over two-thirds of their Big East games under Dixon, but have played into the tournament's second weekend just three times in a dozen seasons, and not once this decade. 2011 seemed like the last best hope for Pitt to break through under Dixon, and now four years removed from that, Pitt hasn't contended since. My impression is that we're a few years away from Dixon hopping somewhere else. There's only so long you can be good but not great.
29. Kevin Ollie, UConn (47-8-58): Ollie won a National Championship. No coach with one of those will rank nearly as low on this list because none are as much a coaching novice as Ollie. He had two years on the bench with UConn before Jim Calhoun's retirement and now two and a half years running the program. Banners hang forever unless then NCAA makes you take them down, so Ollie deserves a ton of credit for what the Huskies did last spring, but without that run (and without Calhoun recruit Shabazz Napier), Ollie is nowhere near the top. Six games are still six games.
28. Larry Krystkowiak, Utah (297-108-42-7): Look at the kenpom trend! Oh my. The New Coach K has been around the world, playing in the NBA and overseas, serving as a DI and NBA assistant, and then as head coach for Montana and the Bucks before coming to Salt Lake City. He also joins The Old Coach K in the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame. Uncanny! Anyway, this is about as high on the list as you can go with only one NCAA tournament win (in 2006 at Montana). His recruiting looks suspect, too, but I'm ready to push All In if Utah has another good year next year without Delon Wright.
27. Josh Pastner, Memphis (90-9-33-37-90): Pastner famously had an 0-13 record against top 25 teams at one point in his career early last year, which of course meant that Pastner couldn't coach. Only then he won five of those games last season and Memphis themselves stayed in the top 25 wire-to-wire which must have meant that those coaches were all even worse (hint: no). But while the criticism is probably too strident, he's had plenty of talent in his six years without yet having much to show for it. Some of those guys have been headaches (Kuran Iverson, Jelan Kendrick) and some wasn't quite as good as the advanced hype (Will Barton, Joe Jackson). Pastner's lack of experience keeps him low. Five years from now he could be #1 on the list.
26. Mike Brey, Notre Dame (11-37-37-99-14): Never trust a basketball coach in a turtle neck. It's my longstanding impression that if you can't by yourself a decent suit and make yourself look presentable, you're not a great coach. Call this the Brey test. Not to be confused by the Enfield test, where the attractiveness of your wife serves as a proxy for your recruiting ability. Any head basketball coach that can't outkick his coverage belongs in the mid-majors. Uh, anyway, Brey made a Sweet 16 once, way back in 2003. He's a terrific offensive coach. 2015 is his 7th team in 14 years to be in top 11 of adjusted efficiency. His defenses are terrible, never having rim protectors or rebounders and never applying much pressure to the opposition. That's a ceiling.
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