Tournament Wins By Program The Last Decade
The post below attempted something along these lines, but I was more interested in where we stack up nationally. Here are the total wins by the top 10 programs over the last 10 years, including what has been won this year so far. As someone who despises KU I'd love to cherry pick and do 9 years because it would knock 5 of their wins off and none of ours, but I'll just have to repeat this post next year to get that satisfaction. We're in good company, folks. Go Blue.
Kentucky -- 24
Kansas -- 21
Michigan -- 20
Gonzaga -- 20
Syracuse -- 19
Duke -- 18
North Carolina -- 17
Michigan State -- 17
Florida -- 16
Wisconsin -- 16
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:02 AM ^
That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought Syracuse to be that high on the list.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:04 AM ^
We'd swap spots with them if not for 2013.
Another win puts us in second place and it's just a shame UK doesn't have the opportunity to add any Ws this year.
Kansas is done adding W's for the year too!
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:12 AM ^
Shows how hard it is to prep for a well-run 2-3 zone. They don't win the conference because everyone sees it/them 2x a year. They win in March because most teams rarely see it.
Same goes for a very well executed offense - which is why I loved the Beilein hire from go. And now that we've seen what Howard can do on O, the March continues -- hopefully for 4 more, and 6 more every year after.
Wade, Calipari, Self, even K now, aren't coaches. They're talent collectors -- and they're willing to pay for their collection. Boeheim is a coach, like Howard and Beilein. And, frankly, so is Izzo.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:23 AM ^
Frank Izzo?
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:33 AM ^
I've always thought this about Self and some of the others. He's a talent manager, and without a highly talented team, he doesn't succeed. His modus operandi is shuffling cards to get the strongest hand on the floor. Coaches in the NBA have to be talent managers; but the best coaches at the college level are teachers and mentors.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:48 AM ^
I disagree with this.
I think Bill Self is a very good evaluator of talent (he doesn't get as many 4 and 5 stars as Coach K/Duke does, Roy Williams/UNC does, or Calipari/Kentucky). Also, I think history has shown that he deserves more credit for the 2005 Illinois team. (In retrospect, I'm glad he left Illinois for Kansas. He was primed to have a great run at Illinois and impose his will over the Big Ten.)
But I think Self's best ability is to maximize talent during the regular season. He's actually a damn good Xs and Os coach. He has some preferred core plays but he does a darn good job adding and subtracting plays to fit personnel and adapt every year. But the NCAAT is unforgiving. People remember his bad losses but don't know that he has been to the Elite 8 in 8 out of 17 seasons. That's pretty damn good.
Also, KU has had some bad chokes While Duke won the National Championship in 2010, it was actually KU that was ahead of Duke in the Ken Pom rankings before the loss to UNI in the Round of 32. (I still vividly remember that loss. When the brackets came out, a few perceptive KU fans were worried about that match-up. KU's Scout site was one of the best places to talk college basketball. The merger with 247Sports destroyed that community imo.)
And KU was the best team in the country last season so the 2020 NCAAT getting cancelled screwed over KU Hoops (just like it screwed over South Carolina women's hoops).
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:09 PM ^
Yeah, he would have had a great run at illannoy, but if all M history holds in that storyline, Beilein (and Howard) would have won their fair share against him -- and still outperformed him in the tournament.
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:18 PM ^
Your description of Self as "maximizing talent", good with Xs and Os, and adding and subtracting plays is exactly what I would define as being a talent manager. He's not taking kids and teaching them the game, growing them into team players. He's taking 18 year old phenoms (as many as he can pull away from Duke, Kentucky, et. al.) and adapting his game, juggling his line-up, to get the most wins out of them. Then he ships the hottest commodities off to the NBA and grabs another to fill the spot. It's a fine skill. He is definitely a good evaluator of talent. But he isn't a teacher or mentor to the level that someone like Beilein or Howard is.
Uhh disagree. Pop, Kerr, Nurse, Quinn, Spo etc are NOT talent managers and would coach circles around anyone in NBA or college.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:52 AM ^
I’m not sure I’d agree on Izzo. He’s a talent collector as well. The only reason they sucked ass this year is because the talent he recruited were busts and he couldn’t actually coach them up. Imagine if Loyer, Watts, Hauser, Brown and Bingham were actually coached well. They were all rated pretty highly and not a single one of them would have started for us. Getting berated and taking a seat on the bench after one mistake isn’t really coaching
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:18 PM ^
The way his teams get better all season long (typically), that's coaching. None of us like him, but last year, I would not have been surprised to see them win it all. Winston went from getting beaten by Z/X to beating Z/X, and he was ready to will them to the FF.
Now, we all agree Izzo has wasted lots of talent, but he's also made some pretty good recruits great college players and built good teams around a couple key players. He's never been good with the 5-star, always the 4s on down he can coach up. And Loyer belongs in the MAC.
Do his teams actually get better as the season goes on or are they just talented enough that they play below where they should be playing earlier in the year?
Winston was a couple spots away from being a five star guy out of high school. Simpson was 30 spots lower than him, so Cash playing better than Simpson, you know, like a high 4 star isn’t proof that Izzo coached him up, it means he was super talented and played up to his rating. In Winston’s same class, you also had five star Bridges, five star Langford, and high 4 star Ward. So in that class alone, you had the 3rd ranked team nationally with 2 five stars and 2 high four stars. That class should have won a lot of games and they did. Is that because of Izzo? I guess we’ll never know if Izzo is a great coach or if it’s the abundance of talent he gets every year
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:38 PM ^
Rarely seeing 2-3 plus the length and athleticism makes it hard to simulate in practice for non-ACC teams. You always see Syracuse play above their seed level for that reason
And worth noting Michigan destroyed that zone when we faced Syracuse in the tournament.
Granted, coach Beilein knew Syracuse inside and out from his years coaching at LeMoyne - but he's a zen master of offensive efficiency.
Certainly a big part of why Michigan has been so successful in tournament play - ability to adapt to any opponent.
Coach Johnson, Elkhart (IN) Memorial HS (I wonder if he is still alive), needs to run a clinic to show teams how to destroy a 2-3. A 1-2-2 offensive set with the wings wide and the bottom two being on opposite blocks. The cuts, screens, reads and passes his kids made-oh my, what a thing of beauty! They were shooting layups and uncontested jumpers from the elbows all night long. And as long as the opposition insisted upon staying in that configuration...there was nothing they could do to slow it down.
I watch teams struggle against Syracuse and just shake my head-such incompetence!
Were you a Charger?!
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:44 AM ^
They're the Byzantines of college basketball. Always an inch away from irrelevance and greatness at the same time.
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:05 PM ^
Syracuse basketball = Service Academy Football. Defeat this defense that you'll never see again...Not trying to take away from Boeheim, he does a heck of a job coaching them up. But if I'm a protected seed, the last thing I want to see is Syracuse in the first four in my pod.
I'm really surprised Villanova is not up there, their 2 championships and 2 wins this year give them 14 wins.
Syracuse fucks with people that can’t figure out the 2-3 zone. It’s like don’t play Army/Navy in football.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:04 AM ^
If you were to cut that down from 10 years to 8 years back, we'd be #1 with the most wins since 2013 at 20.
Michigan could also be #1 for the last ten years after next years tournament.
And I'm ready for this team to be #1 for the next 10 years.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:04 AM ^
Syracuse is the one that makes me do a double-take. It seems like they're always a double-digit seed, yet they advance.
On a related topic, there are two programs that have gone to the Sweet 16 the last four tournaments: Gonzaga and Michigan.
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:08 PM ^
I agree regarding Syracuse but it makes sense when I think about it a little more.
This year notwithstanding, the ACC is usually the toughest basketball conference in the country to navigate, and all those schools have the benefit of seeing Syracuse at least once to twice a year, maybe even three times in the ACC tournament, so they are able to routinely prepare more extensively for that infamous 2-3 zone.
But when it comes to tourney time, they're coming across teams who almost never see that type of defense. Especially a type defense that is executed as well as Boeheim is able to do. I remember in the 2013 tournament they just ran over Indiana because they had no idea how to handle the 2-3 zone, and then I think the following round they held Marquette to like 35 points in the entire game.
Boeheim is a great coach in his own right, but that 2-3 zone is hard to prepare for, especially when you hardly ever see it.
I can't count how many Selection Sundays were spent in the last decade with analysts saying Syracuse should've been out instead of [insert mid major name here]. That 2-3 matchup zone is tough to deal with.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:20 AM ^
Villanova should be here too. I looked it up-they're at 18
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:27 AM ^
Good catch...not sure how I missed them. I get 19 in that span, but in either case they should be on the list.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:27 AM ^
if we don't win it all, i hope gonzaga does. what few has done out there is incredible.
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:51 PM ^
It's hard to believe now that his predecessor (Dan Monson) left Gonzaga for Minnesota. That move seemed logical at the time.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:28 AM ^
Thanks just proved again that we’re a basketball school.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:35 AM ^
We're a basketball school now!
Let's get those four more wins this year, that we need to go to the top of the list!
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:00 PM ^
Yes sir! I can’t imagine how awesome that would be!
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:35 AM ^
Hoping we add four more wins to that total this year. Go blue!
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:46 AM ^
Now just need to get the B1G over the National Championship hump. 0 NCs in the last 20 years.
March 23rd, 2021 at 11:52 AM ^
Yep. If someone from the Big Ten is going to win it all, it might as well be us...as Coach Howard begins his Michigan Basketball dynasty.
March 23rd, 2021 at 12:20 PM ^
I hate KU as well! Hoping this NCAA investigation will destroy their entire program. Let their precious basketball program languish with their football program.
Hi, Kstate! I'm in Hoyt, just north of Topeka, and in a tricky situation because my children and husband are all Jayhawk faithful. Oddly, two of my children have married into anti-KU families, so there's beginning to be a nervous balance. But it's nice to see evidence of M fandom here and there!
Thanks for this. Your transparency of taking a decade of data is admirable.
I believe Michigan should have 21 wins. That win over Telllllllsa counts as an official tournament victory.
Nope. The 20 includes Tulsa.
2012: 0
2013: 5
2014: 3
2015: 0
2016: 1
2017: 2
2018: 5
2019: 2
2020: 0
2021: 2
Ah ok I was counting 10 tournaments and included 2011 because there was no tournament in 2020.
But where is Illinois?
This can't be right. Illinois is the best--just ask them.
Since they got a tough 8 seed, they are saying they should change the rules so that they get to split the sweet 16 honors with Michigan. Like Co-SW16 Big 10 representatives.
Weird to see Michigan so high up. I remember when Beilein was hired, I was hoping we'd make the tournament almost every year, and make a few Sweet 16 runs (my standards had dropped considerably). To see them with the most wins from the Big 10 and top 5 over the last 10 years is amazing.
Also saw in a RCMB thread (head over just occasionally) say that they always have to carry the BIG 10 in the tournament. Seems like the results are in, and that was a LIE.
It would be interesting to see a weighted version of this, that gives corresponding weights to the rounds that a school advances to . . . from the first round to the national championship.
Three seasons of just Sweet Sixteens is not worth as much as one National Championship season, yet they are both going to show up as 6 wins.
But that's not nearly the same level of success.
Isn't it? A national championship is awesome and amazing, but your comparison assumes that the other two years, the team doesn't even make it into the round of 64. Maybe I'm an unusual basketball fan, but I think I'd prefer a team that was solid every year, played well, and made it to the second weekend of the tournament, over one that fluked its way to the top one time and was trash every other year.