Ranking college basketball’s top 10 Coach of the Year candidates

We have nearly arrived at the final month of the college basketball regular season, which means the pictures for the sports major individual awards races are becoming clear enough for everyone to see.

With just a few weeks left until the arrival of March Madness, here are the 10 men who have separated themselves from the rest of the pack in the race for National Coach of the Year.

For a solid chunk of this season it looked like Bobby would be the Hurley whose name belonged on this list. But Arizona State has fallen back to earth while Rhode Island simply refuses to lose. The Rams are a perfect 10-0 in the Atlantic 10 and haven’t been beaten by anyone since a 68-64 loss at Alabama Dec. 6. Don’t be surprised if Rhody does what it nearly did a year ago and plays its way into the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.

It’s easy to say Kruger doesn’t deserve as much credit as the other guys on the list because the other guys on the list don’t have a transcendent player like Trae Young. But how many of those other guys would have had the bravery and the acumen to give a true freshman point guard complete control the way Kruger has with Young this season?

The Sooners were a woeful 11-20 last season and were picked to finish sixth in the 10-team Big 12 before the start of the year. I don’t care if Kruger added the real Steph Curry and not just his college clone, the job he’s done at OU this season has been remarkable.

Few coaches entered 2017-18 with a warmer seat than Brownell, who had just wrapped up the Jaron Blossomgame era without a single trip to the NCAA tournament. In fact, Brownell and Penn State’s Pat Chambers are the only major conference coaches in the country who have failed to go to the Big Dance in each of the last six seasons but have still managed to hang on to their jobs.

Brownell’s gig what appear to be safe for the near future as his current Clemson squad sits at 18-4 overall, 7-3 in the ACC, and ranked No. 20. The Tigers have quality non-conference wins over Florida and Ohio State, and have already notched league victories over the formidable trio of North Carolina, Miami, and Louisville.

The Volunteers were picked to finish 13th in the 14-team SEC at the start of the season. Instead they’re 15-5 overall, one win away from being in a tie for second in the league standings, and ranked No. 18 in the current AP poll.

In order to keep his spot on this list, Barnes needs to avoid the late season swoon that doomed his team a year ago. The Volunteers went 3-7 after the calendar flipped to February last year. Losing two of the top three scorers from that disappointing team led to the dramatically lower expectations for 2017-18.

It isn’t easy to have a high degree of success at Texas Tech. Just ask Bobby Knight, Pat Knight, Billy Gillispie, or Tubby Smith. With an unrivaled commitment to defense, Beard is doing it, despite having to compete in a Big 12 conference that’s even more of a monster this season than it is in most.

There are more than a few people who will tell you that Beard is the next big coaching star in college basketball. It’s not hard to see why.

How about some love for a coach whose team is one of the the few that have lived up to their lofty preseason expectations this year? If this award can only be won by coaches whose teams overachieve, then we should just go ahead and eliminate the coach of every preseason top-10 team at the start of each year.

The fact of the matter is Wright has once again built a Nova machine that is ranked No. 1 and mowing down the rest of the Big East. This doesn’t just happen automatically because you’ve reached a point where people expect it to. It happens because you have an acute sense of what it takes to build said machine and the ability to motivate your players in a way that puts them in the set position where they need to be. Sure, we almost expect to see Villanova in this spot whenever the calendar flips to February, but that doesn’t mean that Wright living up to that expectation doesn’t warrant some significant praise.

Pearl and Auburn continue to have one of the most awkwardly successful seasons in recent history. The Tigers were one of the teams heavily implicated in the FBI scandal that rocked the college basketball world right before the start of the season. As a result, Auburn fired an assistant coach, put two other staffers on administrative leave, and suspended arguably its two top players. There was also talk that Pearl himself might be fired unless he cooperated with the school’s internal investigation.

Despite all this happening right as the season was about to tip-off, Auburn currently finds itself alone in first place in the SEC and ranked just outside the top 10 with a 20-2 overall record. If this is award given solely for on-court accomplishments, then Pearl’s name has to be near the top of the list, despite everything that’s gone on with his program this season.

It’s remarkable that Painter could lose a player like First Team All-American Caleb Swanigan, the Big Ten’s all-time leader in double-doubles, and put together a team that is in the thick of the national title hunt the very next season. Purdue returned the other four starters from last season’s Sweet 16 squad, but Swanigan was such a massive part of what that Boilermakers team did well that it was difficult to see them being superior in his absence. That’s exactly what has happened. Purdue hasn’t lost since the Battle 4 Atlantis in November and appears poised to win its second straight Big Ten regular season title.

One of the main reasons why the brass at Ohio State made the controversial decision to fire Thad Matta in early June was that there seemed to be no hope for the 2017-18 season. What’s the point in giving a guy one more year if the roster he’s bringing back has zero chance to succeed?

Chris Holtmann, who was hired away from Butler days later, has taken that same roster and turned it into a team that is currently 10-1 in the Big Ten and a lock to make the NCAA tournament. Keita Bates-Diop is a front-runner for Big Ten Player of the Year who is making a legitimate case to be a first team All-American, while guys like Jae’Sean Tate and C.J. Jackson are playing with an energy and an effectiveness that OSU fans weren’t betting on heading into the year.

The sample size is still relatively small, but Holtmann certainly appears to be the real deal.

It almost feels like this one is more about us than it is him.

After losing the bulk of their production from last season to either graduation or transfer, it was understandable why most believed this would be the year Bennett’s program finally took a step back. The Cavaliers weren’t included in either major preseason top-25 poll, and were picked to finish sixth in the ACC by the league’s media.

Everyone was wrong. The 20-1 Cavs are undefeated in conference play at 9-0 and already seem like a near-lock to take down the ACC’s regular season title. UVA’s lone defeat remains an understandable road loss at West Virginia.

Until he gives the voters a reason not to, Bennett’s team should be voted into every preseason top-25 from now until eternity. Surely, we won’t get fooled again.