The men’s college basketball season tips off Monday, with storylines aplenty. Can UConn become the first team to three-peat as national champions since John Wooden’s UCLA dynasty? Who will replace Zach Edey as the face of the sport? And how come it’s been 25 years since the Big Ten last won a national title?
We have our thoughts, but it’s best to ask the people whose opinions actually matter: the coaches.
We polled 11 coaches from across the five major conferences on a variety of topics: the teams being overly hyped (and vice versa); the best transfers no one is talking about; and the toughest teams to regularly game plan for. We also asked for their big-picture thoughts on the state of the sport, especially amid football-oriented conference realignment. In exchange for their candor, the coaches were granted anonymity. Their answers have been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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Entering the season, who is the most overrated team in the country?
Coach 1: Purdue. Can’t replace Zach Edey. (Matt) Painter’s a great coach and they’ve got great coaches, but it’s like Michael Jordan.
The other one would be UCLA. If their name wasn’t UCLA, they wouldn’t be that high.
Coach 2: I’ll be interested to see what happens at Louisville. They’re getting a lot of hype, I guess, but you have to put all that together. Obviously Pat (Kelsey) can do it, he’s done it. I guess because of not being an established team, you just don’t know.
Coach 3: Duke.
Coach 4: Gonzaga.
Coach 5: Maybe Texas A&M. They rely so much on Wade Taylor. And, I mean, he’s really good, but they have a hard time scoring the ball if they’re not turning you over and he’s not scoring.
Coach 6: UConn. Just so many new faces. The rim protection that (Donovan) Clingan provided, while they’ve brought some guys in there, I don’t know that they’re able to pressure and get out and do what they did. Because he was the second line of defense, and I’m not sure the guys that they have are as good at the rim as he was.
Coach 11: Kansas is going to have to figure themselves out. They’ve got a lot of talent, and I think they’ll be good, but we’ll have to see.
On the flip side, who is the most underrated team in the country?
Coach 7: St. John’s. They’ll be better than people think. Hall of Fame coach, got really good size and experience. If they can get those two guards (Kadary Richmond and Deivon Smith) that they brought in to play well together and do what they did at former schools but do that in their system, they’re going to be in really good shape.
Coach 8: Wake Forest.
Coach 3: Iowa State and Cincinnati.
Wherever Iowa State is rated, it’s not high enough. Cincinnati’s got experience. They have depth. They’ve got an edge to them. They barely missed the tournament, and they brought a bunch of guys back.
Coach 5: Saint Louis. (Josh) Schertz is really good.
Coach 9: North Carolina.
Coach 10: Iowa. I just think they’ve got experience. They’ve got shooting. They’ve got skill all over the floor. Those freshmen were great last year; they’ll take a big move in the right direction. I just think they shoot the ball so well at every position.
Coach 6: Xavier. Return (Zach) Freemantle and Jerome Hunter to the front line and have their point guard back, and then I really like the guards that they got in the portal.
Coach 4: Texas Tech.
Coach 11: Georgia’s going to be really good. They had a good recruiting class come in, Asa Newell is going to be one of the better freshmen in the country, and what they were able to do last year to finish off the year, they could be a team to be reckoned with.
What is the deepest league in the country?
Coach 2: SEC. I mean, just on paper, you look at those teams, you look at the talent and the coaches.
I do think the ACC’s a lot deeper this year than it’s been, because of the new coaches. I don’t think it’s the Big Ten. The Big 12 — I mean, there’s so many new teams. Could be. But I say SEC.
Coach 7: Big 12 is probably deepest at the top. And then deepest deepest is probably SEC and Big Ten.
Coach 8: ACC.
Coach 10: Big Ten. Obviously you’re bringing in four great programs, four great coaches and guys that know how to win. There’s no nights off.
Coach 11: The SEC. It’s been the Big 12 the last two years, but I don’t think it’s going to be as strong as it has been top to bottom.
Coach 1: Big 12.
Coach 6: Big 12.
Coach 4: Big 12.
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Who is the most interesting player in the country not named Cooper Flagg?
Coach 5: I love (Baylor wing) V.J. Edgecombe. He’s freaking really good. He’s so athletic and plays hard all the time, and he’s skilled on top of it. I think he’s really good.
Coach 3: (Penn State guard) Ace Baldwin.
Coach 1: (Kansas center) Hunter Dickinson. Something draws you to him. Skill set with that size is unique.
Coach 7: (Duke wing) Kon Knueppel. He’s starting to get a lot of love now, but he’s going to be a fun one to watch.
Coach 8: (Duke center) Khaman Maluach.
Coach 10: The (Robbie) Avila kid for Saint Louis. I just love that kid.
Coach 9: It’s going to be interesting to see, in terms of the transfers — like, I thought it was a really cool story with Dalton Knecht. I mean, he almost won National Player of the Year. You take him off of Tennessee’s team, and … So what newcomer is going to have that impact that surprises you?
Coach 2: (North Carolina guard) RJ Davis is back for his 15th year. I don’t think Hunter Dickinson is interesting.
But everything’s about Cooper Flagg — and rightfully so. He’s pretty f—ing good.
Who is a transfer newcomer not enough people are talking about?
Coach 1: (Xavier guard) Ryan Conwell. Made winning plays. Liked his athleticism. Liked his skill set, but I thought he did the little things. Thought he was the best prospect on that Indiana State team.
Coach 10: Danny Wolf at Michigan.
Coach 9: We didn’t look at him because we didn’t need (a guard), but Chucky Hepburn at Louisville. I watched him at Wisconsin, and he’s a good player.
Coach 2: I played against Chucky Hepburn, he’s pretty good. Everyone’s talking about this (Terrence) Edwards kid from JMU (at Louisville), but I don’t know him. I’ll tell you who nobody is talking about who I think is a pretty solid player: Jaeden Zackery at Clemson.
Coach 6: (Indiana center) Oumar Ballo.
Coach 11: (Texas guard) Tramon Mark. I don’t know if enough people have given him the same sort of attention they’ve given to Johnell Davis (at Arkansas) or (AJ) Storr at Kansas.
Coach 4: (Bill) Self’s been high on him; I’m going to go (Kansas guard) Zeke Mayo.
Who is the opposing coach you fear most in late-game situations?
Coach 6: Rick Pitino. He’s got a lot of tricks in that bag.
Coach 11: Rick Pitino’s one of those guys with a lot of things in his back pocket, because of the experience he has.
Coach 9: I don’t know if he’s the best, but the person that comes to mind is Coach (Brad) Brownell at Clemson. He’s good.
Coach 7: Kelvin Sampson.
Coach 10: Tom Izzo. They’re just so mentally tough down the stretch.
Coach 1: Bill Self. He can get a basket.
Coach 5: I think Bill Self’s pretty good.
Coach 4: Bill Self. He plans for every special situation — what they’re going to run late, baseline out of bounds, he steals a basket late. He just finds ways to manufacture points late. I feel like part of it is because he’s very demanding and very direct on exactly what his team will do, and they try to carry it out.
Who is the toughest team to game plan for?
Coach 4: Houston, because you can’t simulate (it). The offensive rebounding, there’s nothing you can do about it. If you don’t do it like they do, you don’t do it like they do. The physical part of it, it’s just a f—ing brawl.
That game is the hardest to prepare for, not because it’s like an X’s and O’s tactical whatever; it’s more because you know what it is, but good luck beating it and stopping it.
Coach 3: Houston. How they guard you, you have to scheme passes against them.
Coach 1: Iowa State, because of their defense.
Coach 5: Tennessee, because of how physical they are. We struggle with them. It’s hard to prepare for them because it’s hard to match their physicality on defense.
Coach 9: Florida State. The switching and all that, it just takes you out of everything. It’s like, what are we doing here?
Coach 2: A lot of times it depends on personnel. Like, Duke isn’t technically, but they’re so hard personnel-wise.
Coach 8: Wake (Forest)’s difficult just because of their offensive flow and spacing. It’s not necessarily plays; it’s more the system of how they play, and I think they do a really good job.
Coach 11: Alabama, because they can play a lot of different ways, and Nate (Oats) is a really good coach. He does a great job teaching offense. They can really score the ball.
Coach 10: I would say probably Purdue, just because they run so much stuff.
Coach 7: UConn. They have answers to things that you take away on offense, or do on your offensive end.
Coach 6: UConn. Movement, and the counters to what they do offensively is very difficult, and then you combine it with the pressure on the defensive end.
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What would UConn winning a third consecutive national championship mean for college basketball?
Coach 7: It would mean that the rest of us have to get better.
Coach 6: It would be incredible in this day and age, with the transfer portal and how you’re able to remake a team overnight. If they were able to do it three times in a row, I think it would be an amazing feat.
Coach 3: It’d be special for them in that you can get guys to come back, and add the right pieces — young guys and transfers. You can do it in a balanced way and win.
Coach 9: They have new pieces, but they have a team that’s talented enough to do it. The consistency that they have played with over the last two to three years has been elite.
Coach 2: I don’t think it’d be bad. I mean, I think it would continue to garner interest from people, because they’re going to tune in to see if they can do it. Some people go, ‘Oh, it’s a monopoly.’ F— no. I think it’ll bring a lot of interest to our game if they make that kind of run.
Coach 4: That’d be insane. It would be hard to argue that anybody else is the best coach of this era in the last many years if he were to do that.
Coach 1: Means (Dan) Hurley should retire. That’d be John Wooden-esque.
Super conferences would mean __ for conference play …
Coach 8: They’ll make it pretty irrelevant, that’s what I think. It just diminishes the importance of it.
Coach 6: Meaningless conference play.
Coach 7: A lot of travel.
Coach 3: In football, they have east and west. We’ll have divisions. It’s going to be like the NFL.
Coach 4: Less rivalry games.
Coach 1: Less traditional nonconference rivalries because you can’t schedule as many.
Coach 11: You wouldn’t have as many marquee nonconference matchups, because you’re going to get into, like, 20, 22 conference games. Your nonconference would be really watered down.
Coach 2: I just wish they’d leave. Get football out, let them go play in their own sandbox, and let us go back to our traditional leagues. Let’s get Maryland back in the ACC. Let the Big East be the Big East and the West Coast be the West Coast. Because the most selfish portion of the whole deal is, they’re not missing any class. We’re the ones going midweek. They’re going on the weekend; they’re not missing s—.
And I think it’d be better for our fans, because if we could go back to having our regional conferences and rivalries, then people would be excited. I mean, no offense, but if it’s a Saturday and (a new team in the league is) coming to town, are people going to get fired up for that?
Coach 9: (College basketball’s) not going to look like this in a couple years. It’s just not. We’re either going to be in the Big Ten, the SEC, or some super conference. That’s where it’s going.
But it’s also sad, because I remember when it was (regional teams only), and you could bus everywhere, and you played everybody twice. So I think you lose that. It’s changing, though, so why mourn about it?
This season marks 25 years since the Big Ten last won a national championship (Michigan State in 2000). Why do you think that is?
Coach 9: When? 2000? That was with Mateen Cleaves, right? … I would have never guessed that.
I don’t know why, but it’s not indicative of what a great conference and coaches have been there. It just isn’t. When you think about college basketball, you think about Indiana, you think about Michigan State, you think about Purdue. You just think about those places. Irregardless of them winning a national championship, the Big Ten is the Big Ten.
Coach 8: Izzo was the last one? That’s crazy to think about. I guess in ’15, with Wisconsin, they’ve been close. Michigan State in 2009, 2019. Illinois (in 2005), Purdue (last season).
It’s part of the tournament being so random. I think that’s part of it. … I don’t know if they have the different styles (of play) as much, but that can easily change pretty quickly, based on the tournament and the randomness that can happen in it.
Coach 2: I know it — and I use that in recruiting. Mateen Cleaves. I think they’re overrated.
They’ve had some good teams — they were in it this year — but they just haven’t been quite good enough. That tournament is hard, because a lot of times the best teams don’t end up winning it. I think their style of play is a little slow, and I think once you get in the tournament, they’re a little predictable. It’s a bump and grind league that maybe doesn’t translate to the tournament.
Coach 5: Style of play. Usually the slowest high-major league every year. I think their style of play is conducive to getting upset. Fewer possessions. Teams run on them. They don’t play a very modern style, so teams shoot a lot of 3s in the tournament, and they’re not used to guarding it. I think it’s the most traditional, old-school, last to adapt to playing modern basketball in the country.
Coach 1: I don’t think they’re as talented.
Coach 3: When is the last time they had a great guard? They’ve had great big men. When the Flintstones won it, they had Mateen Cleaves. When Michigan made it, they had Trey Burke.
Coach 10: It was close last year. I mean, Purdue ran into one of the hottest teams that the sport has seen in a long time. But Purdue obviously gave it a chance, and it’s just a matter of time before they win it again.
Coach 7: So much gets made of conferences in the postseason, but when you get to the postseason, there are no conferences. I understand it is an interesting stat, but I think it’s more probably variability than anything. You could go the next 10 years and have three or four Big Ten teams win it. In the Big East, with UConn twice and Villanova having won four out of the last eight, I don’t think that necessarily says that that league has some corner on the market of national championships. It had the best team four times.
I guess what it says about the Big Ten is that they haven’t had the best team in that time. They had the second-best team last year.
(Top Image: Dan Goldfarb and Meech Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Cameron Browne, G Fiume, Grant Halverson / NBAE / Getty Images)
