Best KU Tourney Coach

I have finished my NCAA tourney analysis going back to 1957. That covers 5 KU coaches. There is a clear choice for best NCAA tourney coach and it is......drumroll....Larry Brown. Now let me explain. I calculated two different measures.

1. Actual Matchup Method -- I compared the actual tourney wins to the projected wins based on actual games matchup. In other words, Bill Self has coached in 70 NCAA games. I calculated the probability of Self winning in each of those 70 games and summed that number up and compared to the number of games actually won. The projected wins for those 70 games summed up to 46.6 and Self has actually won 49. So Self has won 2.4 more games than he was projected to win. We will see how that measures up in a minute.

2. Proforma Method -- The second measure is where I projected the probabilities for each team in each round once the field is set. So for instance, This season, KU, as a 3 seed was projected to win 1.43 games. Self won only 1 thus falling short of projection by 0.43 games. In 2008 KU was projected to win 3.65 games. But KU won it all going 6-0 thus winning 2.35 games more than projected.

Lets look at 2008 just for a minute. As I said, KU was projected to win 3.65 games in the proforma. But in the actual matchup of the 6 games, they were projected to win 4.62 games. So in the actual matchup method they were 1.38 games better.

So I calculated these two methods for every team every year.

So if you were asked to pick a coach you wanted to coach your team in the NCAA Tourney and you based it on this analysis, who would you pick? Based on this analysis, there are three coaches that stand above the pack. And by pack I am referring to the 113 coaches who have coached in at least 15 games in the NCAA. Those 3 are:

Brad Stevens
Rollie Massimino
Larry Brown

Larry Brown in 8 tournament appearances (5 with Kansas) and 27 games has won 19 games while projected to win 11.2 proforma games and 134.4 matchup games. That is 170% on proforma and 132% on matchup. That is outstanding. Massimino and Stevens are even better. Just by way of comparison, the average for the 113 coaches in this group is 111% on proforma and 104% on matchup.

If you limit it to 40 games coached (29 coaches) you get Denny Crum, John Wooden, Billy Donovan, Tom Izzo and Jim Calhoun. The average of this group is 118% proforma and 107% matchup. Self is 22nd on this list. The guys on this list you do not want coaching your team in the tourney are (worst first)

Rick Barnes
Bob Huggins
Lute Olson
Mark Few
Bob Knight
Eddie Sutton
Bill Self

Larry Brown is the only KU coach who has a better record at Kansas than at other schools.

Ted Owens has by far the worst record of the KU coaches.

Regarding Bill Self, while his record is better than the average for the 819 coaches who have coached in the NCAA tourney since 1957, that is not the standard. If you average out all records for the 819 coaches it will sum to zero net wins above projection. But being better than average is like damning with faint praise. That is not the standard. Clearly, the best coaches do far better than that on average. The elite coaches on this list average 116% of proforma and 107% of matchup. Self is below both of these numbers and at Kansas he is well below. As I have said before, Self is possibly the best (certainly one of the best) regular season coaches ever in the history of college basketball. He would be at of very close to the top of the list on these same metrics if evaluating regular season. But in the tourney, while he is certainly better than the average coach, he is below average among the elite of college coaching.

Here is the list of these top 29 plus all KU coaches.

Thanks for doing this analysis Corpus. HE, I could not agree more about HCLB is a great coach. HCBS has a “Lifetime” Contract he has time to improve the Tourney record.....you all know my opinion on this matter.