Dan Hurley keeps his spot among college basketball’s best

Jun. 11—Dan Hurley’s decision on Monday to turn down the Los Angeles Lakers and return to Connecticut in search of a

three-peat spared college basketball another high-speed turn of the coaching carousel in June. It also meant one of the best coaches in the game would be back in 2024-25. College basketball writer Scott Richey ranks his Top 10:

1. Dan Hurley, Connecticut

It’s not just the fact Hurley guided UConn to back-to-back national championships. It’s how the Huskies did it. As in running roughshod against 12 consecutive opponents by an average of nearly 22 points. Pure and utter domination by two different enough teams means it’s not crazy to think a third not-quite-the-same group could do it again next March/April.

2. Kelvin Sampson, Houston

The Cougars have won 181 games and made three Sweet 16s, an Elite Eight and a Final Four in the past six seasons with the only gap coming in 2020 when there was no NCAA tournament amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Even jumping from the American to the Big 12 for the 2023-24 season didn’t derail Houston’s success under Sampson with a conference title in year one.

3. Bill Self, Kansas

Few teams have dominated a single conference quite like Self’s Jayhawks. Last year’s tie for fifth in the new-look Big 12 (which becomes the new, new-look Big 12 in 2024-25) was his worst. The other 20 seasons the former Illini coach has spent in Lawrence, Kan., include 17 Big 12 titles, no other finish worse than third and two national titles, of course.

4. Matt Painter, Purdue

Painter has “What have you done for me lately?” and long-term success with the Boilermakers with back-to-back Big Ten titles and nine top-four league finishes in the past 10 seasons. Reaching the national-title game in April (before a loss to UConn) helped, too, considering the growing string of losses to double-digit seeds in the NCAA tournament.

5. Scott Drew, Baylor

It’s probably not discussed enough just how much Drew changed Baylor’s fortunes. The program he inherited had just seen one player murder another and its coach try to posthumously frame the slain player as a drug dealer. The Drew-era Bears took some time to recover from all that, but have won at least 20 games in 15 of the last 17 seasons along with the 2021 national title.

6. Mark Few, Gonzaga

That a small, Jesuit university in a mid-major conference could turn into a national power is one of the best things about college basketball. Dan Monson got Gonzaga going with an Elite Eight in 1999, but Few has pushed the program even further with 24 consecutive NCAA tournament appearances. That includes eight Sweet 16s, three Elite Eights and two runner-up finishes.

7. Nate Oats, Alabama

Just more than a decade ago, Oats was coaching high school basketball in Michigan at Romulus High School in Detroit. Now, he has Alabama basketball — fresh off the first Final Four in program history — on track to be ranked higher in the preseason AP Top 25 poll than Alabama football. Tuscaloosa, Ala., has clearly entered the upside down.

8. Brad Underwood, Illinois

Other coaches get credit at being transfer portal maestros. Southern California’s Eric Musselman is usually at the top of the list based on sheer volume alone. Underwood, though, has adapted as well as any coach in the country to the new realities of roster building. Last year was his opus — to date, at least — turning a mostly new-look rotation into a 29-9 Elite Eight team.

9. Tommy Lloyd, Arizona

The only coach to win more games in his first three seasons than Lloyd’s 88 with the Wildcats? That would be Brad Stevens’ 89 at Butler. His career has turned out OK. Lloyd spent two decades working for Few at Gonzaga before taking the Arizona job ahead of the 2021-22 season and is 88-20 with a pair of Sweet 16 appearances since in Tucson, Ariz.

10. Greg McDermott, Creighton

McDermott makes the cut ahead of a pair of Hall of Fame coaches (Michigan State’s Tom Izzo and Arkansas’ John Calipari) that have fallen off in recent years. Still fairly successful. Just not as much as before. McDermott, meanwhile, has helped the Bluejays reach two Sweet 16s and an Elite Eight in the last three seasons with at least 20 wins in 13 of his 14 years at the helm.