Who’s the best at coaching in the NCAA men’s tournament? When we’ve looked at the question in the past, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo always stood out from the pack. Even if you include recent seasons — which have tarnished Izzo’s reputation a little with early losses to Syracuse, Kansas and Middle Tennessee — the Spartans’ coach still gets longer tournament runs out of his teams than we’d expect based on their talent.
But that’s just one way to define the tournament’s top coaching performances. Another approach is to simply look at how often you won the games at hand, regardless of the big-picture focus on how deep you made it each year.