WHO’S THE BEST?, March, 2005

ESPN analyst Jeff Merron recently announced his take on the top college basketball coaches of all time, giving the top spot to John Wooden, UCLA’s coach for 26 years, followed by Dean Smith, former coach of North Carolina, and Mike Krzyzewski of Duke.  Adolph Rupp of Kentucky was ranked 7^th and Forrest “Phog” Allen, Kansas’ long-time coach, ranked 8^th.

In looking over the top 15 all-time winningest D-1 coaches, most of which are still coaching or who have recently retired, five coached in the early years (ending their careers before the 80s) - when teams did not play as many games per year.  Since the 80s, teams coached by the winningest coaches play an average of 32 games per year. That wasn't the case in earlier years.  For example, Adolph Rupp's Wildcats played an average of 26 over his career (1932-72), while Phog Allen's teams (1906-59) played an average of only 21.

Obviously, if teams of the early era played more games per season, their coaches would have piled up more wins. Adjusting the results of the five older coaches by projecting their winning percentages against a 32 game per year schedule, here's who would be the winningest coaches of all-time:

1) Phog Allen - 1135 wins  (32 games x 48 years x 73.9%)

2) Adolph Rupp - 1078 wins

3) Ed Diddle - 960 wins

4) Hank Iba - 909 wins

5) Ray Meyer - 903 wins

Current all-time wins leader Dean Smith's 879 victories would rank 6^th.

Wooden’s 10 national championships make it hard to not pick him as No. 1, but he had only 664 career wins.  Smith, too, is hard to pick against, but he only had two national championships, and Krzyzewski has three. Rupp had four, but did it by regularly cheating (earning the death penalty for Kentucky in 1951, for example), and was an ardent racist.

With all due respect to those four greats, I suggest that ‘the Father of Basketball Coaching’ Phog Allen is the best college basketball coach of all-time.  Here’s why.  Allen’s KU teams either won or were designated national champions three times (’22, ’23, and ’52), his teams won 30 conference championships, he coached Rupp and Smith as well as 14 All-Americans, he almost single-handedly led the drive to have basketball made an Olympic sport in 1936, he was the founder of the National Association of Basketball Coaches and helped create the NCAA, he was a charter member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and based on the above analysis is the winningest coach in basketball history.

Dr. Ken Johnson (KU ’70)