Who is Elite in College Basketball Coaching Ranks.... Simple Math Tells The Story

      There has been much controversy and debate over a local Kentucky sports writer's column on a national sports page. Matt Jones who runs KentuckySportsRadio.com got a chance to travel and report for CBSSports.com. After attending the Louisville, Depaul game in Chicago this past weekend, it inspired him to write an article bashing his teams former coach Rick Pitino. He wrote how Pitino is a mere shell of his former self and has basically fallen out of relevance when it comes to top college basketball coaches. Now Rick was King of the Hill in his days at Kentucky during the 90's and is no longer top of the pops. But he is still very relevant in his profession.

      As a writer for L YES! I also run another sports website WIDESPREAD SPORTS which covers local and national sporting news. We decided to rank the top 10 coaches over the last 5 years based on where there teams finished in the NCAA tournament. We came up with a mathematical formula to rank the coaches with out being bias or including our own opinion, and we wanted to share it with the readers of L YES! Here is the key to how the coaches were scored.

          Won National Title = 10pts      National Champion Runner Up = 8pts      Final Four = 6pts

Elite Eight = 4pts    Sweet Sixteen = 2pts    First Round Advance = 1 Point    Didn't Make Tourney = -2

Let's now see how this list shakes out. There are a few surprises, but overall things look pretty consistent with the current state of college basketball. If you have any comments about the list we have put together you can let you voice be heard by visiting out webpage WIDESPREAD SPORTS and becoming a fan of ours on facebook

(number next to the coaches names represent the number of points the coaches scored)

1-Roy Williams-31

2-Ben Howland-21

3-Tom Izzo-17

4-Bill Self-16

5-Billy Donovan-16

6-Jay Wright-14

7-Rick Pitino -13

8-Jim Calhoun-9

9-Jamie Dixon-8

10-Bruce Pearl-8

List Notables:

• No Surprise at #1 Roy Williams has won 2 National Titles
• Tom Izzo and Ben Howland have been nothing but consistent in the NCAA tournament 
• Billy Donovan has had a rough past few years but won back to back National Titles, though is stock is falling
• Rick Pitino in at #7 proves he truly isn't washed up and is still a very good coach 
• Bruce Pearl just barley makes the list by making 3 sweet 16's n the last 5 years, one with Milwaukee 
• Coach John Calipari misses being on the list because of a stripped appearance in the National Title, but is rapidly climbing this list.
• Coach K I think would normally be listed as a top 10 coach, just not based on his last 5 years in the ncaa tournament