The race for national Coach of the Year is always interesting because the criteria is so vague. Most people go with coaches whose teams exceeded expectations, but what about the coaches of the best teams? We tend to dismiss those with the most talent, but coaches are responsible for recruiting as well. Plus, coaching talented players and getting them to play as a cohesive unit is a lot harder than people think.
More than any other award, Coach of the Year is truly in the eye of the beholder. So behold my midseason top 10 rankings, listed from the bottom up.
10. Ed Cooley, Georgetown
It’s no surprise that Cooley is reversing Georgetown’s fortunes, but the reclamation project is well ahead of schedule. This is, after all, a program that won a total of four Big East games the last three seasons and at one point lost 29 straight conference games. The Hoyas couldn’t quite pull off the upset over St. John’s on Tuesday night, but the fact that the Hoyas had Madison Square Garden jumping again was a major victory. Georgetown still doesn’t have a Quad 1 win but the Hoyas are 3-3 in the Big East and No. 68 in the NET and will have plenty of opportunities to build a tourney resume. Even if they don’t get there, Cooley has given these long downtrodden fans some badly-needed hope.

9. Mike White, Georgia
White technically left Florida voluntarily in 2022, but he had clearly calculated he was on thin ice in Gainesville. Why else would someone want to take over a program that has made one NCAA Tournament since 2011 and is three years removed from a 1-17 finish in the SEC? White’s Dawgs won 16 games in his first season and 20 last year and now they have returned to the Top 25 for the first time since that 2011 season. White is getting the most out of his star freshman forward Asa Newell, but in short order White has built a culture centered on defense, rebounding and toughness. Georgia’s home wins last week over Kentucky and Oklahoma showed this is an NCAA Tournament-caliber team, which no one predicted coming into the season.
8. Brad Underwood, Illinois
Underwood isn’t a first-year coach, but he still had a lot of roster rebuilding to do after he lost six players to the portal. He signed five transfers of his own, but his most important move was to add three stellar freshman, most prominently 6-foot-6 Lithuanian point guard Kasparas Jakucionis. He has also fully embraced NBA style analytics, which is quite the conversion at this stage of his career. The Illini began the season unranked, but they are now No. 19 in the AP poll and could well end up being the best team in the Big Ten.
7. Dusty May, Michigan
May was the golden child who took little FAU to the 2023 Final Four and then convinced his core rotation to return for another season. There was never much doubt that he was made for a high-major job but it is still striking to see him win this much this soon at Michigan. Like so many coaches who take new jobs, May had to rebuild his roster mostly via the transfer portal. One of those imports was his former center in Boca Raton, 7-foot junior Vlad Goldin, who has teamed with 7-foot Yale transfer Danny Wolf to form one of the top frontcourt tandems in the country. Given that the Juwan Howard era ended with a woeful 8-24 record and a rash of scandals, the Wolverines’ success this season represents a remarkable turnaround. May’s forward-thinking, no-drama, even-keep demeanor is the perfect antidote to the drama of the last couple of seasons.

6. Jerrod Calhoun, Utah State
I don’t know what’s in the water in Logan, but whatever it is, I’ll have what they’re having. Just as Danny Sprinkle completely rebuilt this roster and led the Aggies to the second round of the NCAA Tournament last season (and then left for Washington), Calhoun, who coached the last seven years at Youngstown State, brought in eight transfers and has this team ranked 22nd in the AP poll. Utah State’s only loss this season came by two points to UC San Diego. It has road wins over Saint Mary’s and San Diego State as well as a neutral court win over Iowa.
5. Chris Beard, Ole Miss
Beard was relying heavily on transfers way before it was cool. He is masterful at identifying players who are both good enough and tough enough to play for him and then building chemistry on the fly. He was on the verge of taking Texas to an elite level when he lost his job midway through his second season, but he has remade a moribund Ole Miss program in his typically quick fashion. Beard guided the Rebels to a 20-win season and 10th place finish in the SEC last year, and he currently has them 4-0 in the league (15-2 overall) following Tuesday night’s shocking upset at Alabama. This may be his best-ever coaching job – which is saying a lot.
4. Todd Golden, Florida
Okay, so this is an awkward one. On Nov. 8, a Florida independent student newspaper reported that Golden was the subject of a university Title IX investigation for allegedly harassing female undergraduates. That investigation is ongoing, and there is no telling when it will be completed or how it will end. From a purely basketball perspective, however, you can’t argue with what Golden has done this season in Gainesville. The Gators began the season ranked No. 21 in the AP preseason poll and they are now at No. 5 with their only losses coming at Kentucky and at home to Missouri by one point. Golden, 39, established himself as a rising star and analytics maven during his three years as the head coach at San Francisco and he has brought that same modernized style to Florida. Yet, this is by far his most physical team, with the ability to overpower opponents on defense and on the offensive glass. Golden has the Gators in position to play in the Final Four for the first time since Billy Donovan took them there in 2014.

3. Pat Kelsey, Louisville
Since the day Louisville fired Rick Pitino in 2017 (prematurely, one might argue), this once proud program has been on a vertiginous downward spiral. The nadir came under former Cardinal Kenny Payne, who won just 12 games the last two seasons, and only five total in the ACC. Remarkably, Kelsey has already eclipsed those totals (13-5, 6-1 ACC). Not only did he have to totally rebuild this roster through the transfer portal, but the team has suffered multiple injuries that have depleted its bench. The Cardinals already have three Quad 1 wins and no losses outside of Quad 1, and at No. 33 in the NET they are in good position to make the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019.
2. Mark Pope, Kentucky
No coach walked into a job with more pressure and more work to do. Kentucky did not have a single player on its roster when Pope inherited the program from John Calipari. Yet, he strutted into a packed Rupp Arena for his introductory press conference, carrying the 1996 championship trophy he helped win and promised the Big Blue faithful immediate returns. He signed nine players out of the portal and has them winning big with an entertaining style. The Wildcats entered the season ranked 23rd in the AP’s preseason poll but have risen to No. 8 courtesy of wins over six ranked teams (Duke, Gonzaga, Florida, Mississippi State and Texas A&M). Pope still needs to exorcise the demons of recent NCAA Tournament past, but for all the backlash the school faced when it hired Pope last spring after Scott Drew turned the job down, the Kentucky faithful has reason to be excited about this program’s prospects, both for this season and the future.

1. Bruce Pearl, Auburn
The Tigers were ranked No. 11 in the preseason, but a convincing early win at Houston plus a three-game run to the championship at the Maui Invitational vaulted them to the top of the polls as well as all the main metrics. This, despite the fact that only one player (freshman guard Tahaad Pettiford) was considered a top-50 recruit coming out of high school. Pearl has built this roster through mid-major transfers (Johni Broome played his first two seasons at Morehead State, Chad Baker Mazara came from junior college) and good old fashioned year-to-year development. On Tuesday night, Auburn whupped No. 15 Mississippi State 88-66 even though Broome was out with an injured ankle. And let’s not forget, this is Auburn, which had gone 14 years without an NCAA Tournament appearance until Pearl took the Tigers there in 2018 and followed it up with the school’s first Final Four the next year. If that’s not a Coach of the Year, I don’t know what is.