As the the 2022-23 college basketball season marches on through its second week, on-court action is taking precedence over predictions. With actual games to watch and dissect, the lists and rankings that got us through the offseason months and preseason weeks are fading to the background.
But there is one bit of unfinished business for us to handle. Last week, we unveiled our first-ever ranking of the Top 25 And 1 coaches in college basketball. Our team of writers each submitted a ballot, ranking coaches based on who they believe is best at running a program.
The final product created some debate, as many proven coaches were left off. As it turns out, there are more than just 26 good coaches. Even within our staff, there was debate over how and why some coaches were left off the final rankings as each voter brought their ideas for what makes a good coach to the project.
So for this week's Dribble Handoff, our squad is getting together again to lobby for the coaches who were snubbed. Below, each member of our panel makes the case for the one coach they believe was most egregiously snubbed from our collective list.
Buzz Williams, Texas A&M
Williams hasn't coached in the NCAA Tournament since 2019, which apparently worked against him with my colleagues. But that reality has more to do with his career choices than anything else. The 2020 SEC Coach of the Year guided Virginia Tech to three straight NCAA Tournaments from 2017 to 2019 and likely would've maintained a level of success had he remained in the ACC. Instead, he opted to leave and rebuild Texas A&M, and that was always going to take a minute. But now here is, in Year 4 in College Station, and the Aggies are a projected NCAA Tournament team, ranked 16th in the CBS Sports Top 25 And 1.
Assuming this season goes the way it should, Williams will soon join the list of coaches who have led three different schools to the NCAA Tournament -- and the 50 year-old is already the youngest active coach with 300 career wins. Marquette is the only traditionally good job he's ever had, and what he did there -- five NCAA Tournaments in six years, featuring three Sweet 16 appearances and one trip to the Elite Eight -- was super-strong relative to any reasonable standard. Simply put, Williams is arguably the best hard-job coach in the sport, and one of the best coaches period. I had him in the top 20 on my ballot and was frankly surprised he didn't make our final list of 26. -- Gary Parrish
Sean Miller, Xavier
This one's easy, and I think we missed the collective mark by not putting Miller on our initial list. Each of us were allowed to interpret our list of 26 coaches as we saw fit, but for me I ranked according to coaching acumen, age, ability to recruit, track record of winning, and how I'd tier out my list if I had my choice of any coach to take over a generic power-conference program right now. I think if you polled north of 100 coaches and athletic directors across the country, the name not on our list that would comfortably rank in the top 25 is Miller. It was merely a half-decade ago when he was regarded by many as the best coach yet to make a Final Four. Maybe that's still true. I know I'd have him easily in the top 15 in the sport.
Miller, now at Xavier after his Arizona tenure ended in a predictable mess due to the fallout from scandal, nonetheless has a 422-156 record. He's won 73% of his games and made 11 NCAA Tournaments, with four of those trips culminating in Elite Eight runs. He also has eight regular-season conference titles to his name and four more league tourney titles. He's recruited and/or coached 20 NBA picks. At 53 years old, he has minimally 15 more years of college coaching ahead of him if he wants — and if he can sidestep any further NCAA issues. (A suspension from the Arizona IARP case is expected eventually.) In fact, there's a scenario in which, if he elevates Xavier once more, he'll be viewed as the best coach in the Big East in a few years' time. -- Matt Norlander
Nate Oats, Alabama
A 19-14 campaign last season seems to have thrown my colleagues of the scent of just how good a coach Nate Oats really is. He won nearly 70% of his games at Buffalo and has helped transform Alabama basketball since taking the gig in 2019. The team made a 10-win jump from his first to second season and had a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament after winning the SEC regular season crown. That team was emblematic of what he can do, and has done, as a coach: Building run-and-fun teams that thrive on tempo and efficient offense. He's a coach who relies on analytics to recruit, develop and coach, and to me he's a clear top-20 coach in college basketball right now. -- Kyle Boone
Jamie Dixon, TCU
TCU almost lost to Arkansas-Pine Bluff to open the season and did lose Monday to Northwestern State, so Dixon hasn't helped his case early this season. However, his track record supersedes the early-season struggles. As the years go by, his 13-year Pittsburgh tenure looks increasingly impressive because of how awful the Panthers have been since he left. He took them to 11 NCAA Tournaments before he was run off after the 2015-16 season. The Panthers haven't been back since.
When he took over at TCU, his alma mater, for the 2016-17 season, the Horned Frogs hadn't won 20 games in a season in more than a decade. They finished 24-15 in Dixon's first year and made their first NCAA Tournament appearance in 20 years during his second season. TCU was just an inch away from reaching its first Sweet 16 since 1968 last season before it fell in a second-round thriller to No. 1 seed Arizona. Dixon's seventh season at TCU is off to a rocky start, but his 447-208 record in 20 seasons at two challenging jobs is proof that he is one of the top 26 coaches in the profession. -- David Cobb