Just asking: Is Rick Pitino the best coach in the history of college basketball?

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Perhaps, if, in May of 1997, Rick Pitino had resisted the clarion call of the NBA in general and the Boston Celtics in particular, stayed coaching the Kentucky juggernaut he had reconstructed and — and this is a big one — over the next few decades avoided his often self-destructive tendencies, then I think the following question would be fairly common:

Is Rick Pitino the best coach in the history of college basketball?

Pitino is rarely mentioned in such a debate in part because his 758 career victories, his .712 winning percentage and even his two NCAA titles (one of which the NCAA “vacated” due to sanctions) fall far short of other contenders.

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Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, for example, won 1,202 games with a .766 winning percentage at Duke and Army, while taking home five national titles with the Blue Devils. John Wooden won 10 national championships at UCLA. Bob Knight won 902 games and three titles at Indiana despite coaching only one player who would ever become a NBA all-star (Isiah Thomas).

Meanwhile, Adolph Rupp won 82.2 percent of his games at Kentucky, and in a more modern era, Roy Williams was victorious 77.4 percent of the time at North Carolina and Kansas. There are others.

As such, Pitino rarely finds his name among the greatest of the greats. He wasn’t a college lifer though, entrenched for decades at a single program. Part of this was his NBA dalliances — four seasons (two as head coach) in two stints with the New York Knicks, four more years with the Celtics. And part of it was due to the various scandals that seemed to crop up across the decades, leaving him to be seen with caution by some schools. That meant either re-climbing the coaching ladder or even bouncing him out of the college game. (From 2018-2020, for example, he coached in the Greek Professional League and won two titles).

Rick Pitino is about to lead his sixth different team to an NCAA tournament birth, becoming the…

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Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-03-11 19:26:00

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