As soon as once more CBS Sports activities presents our annual Candid Coaches sequence, which spotlights related subjects and points in males’s faculty basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled roughly 100 coaches in latest weeks on quite a lot of topics. Coaches spoke on background and had been offered anonymity to supply unfiltered opinions. That is the second installment in our 2025 survey.
Media shops typically publish an inventory of one of the best coaches in faculty basketball that is formed largely by publicly out there data like wins and championships. These are at all times subjective but additionally fairly simple to do with roughly the identical names slotted close to the highest every time.
However who’re the great guys?
Not simply good coaches but additionally good males, you realize, the kind of individuals you would not thoughts your son enjoying for sometime, and spending 4 years with sometime, if he developed right into a professional basketball prospect. A random particular person in all probability has no grasp for the best way to reply that query with out actual relationships all through the game. However have you learnt who has actual relationships all through the game?
Coaches!
So, with that in thoughts, Matt Norlander and I requested greater than 100 faculty coaches the next query:
In case your son had been a participant, which faculty coach would you need him to spend 4 years with?
(NOTE: An inventory of greater than a dozen coaches accounted for the opposite 21% of the vote.)
Quotes that stood out
On Matt Painter:
- “He is like a brother to me. [He’s] one of the real, well-spoken, compassionate, empathetic [people]. Elite thinker [and] elite coach who has produced with much less and … his player-development, and the way he will get these youngsters to remain, is wonderful to me. He is a very, actually good human being.”
- “Wonderful coach. Higher particular person. Man of integrity. Tells his gamers what they should hear, not what they need to hear. Genuinely cares about his program and the sport of school basketball. Gamers have an excellent understanding of their job.”
- “His program is on the highest stage and has proven that they’re doing the fitting issues to retain gamers. So they’re having an excellent expertise, will develop and get higher, and can at all times hear the reality.”
On Tom Izzo:
- “Izzo embraces old-fashioned and new college. He teaches the sport the fitting approach — and I believe he has the last word respect of his gamers. You get coach Izzo for all times should you play for him.”
- “If he desires to teach 4 extra years, and God solely is aware of why he would need to, the reply for me is Izzo. Whereas I genuinely assume the “chief of males” factor is bullcrap with regards to coaches elevating gamers, Izzo is near it, and his gamers have a tendency to like him and at all times return to this system.
- “Tom Izzo is ‘old-fashioned’ in a great way, a approach most faculty youngsters want/need. His gamers develop on the court docket, they win and, extra importantly, they turn out to be a member of a household for all times. At the very least from my perspective, that appears actual. And if it had been my son, I might need that for him.
The takeaway
Now that the 2025 Candid Coaches sequence has concluded it is truthful to counsel that no person had a greater few weeks in it than Matt Painter and Purdue. Whereas polling coaches, we realized that they imagine the Boilermakers would be the greatest workforce this season and that Purdue level guard Braden Smith will probably be one of the best participant. Coaches additionally described Painter because the greatest Xs and Os coach within the sport and among the many favorites to subsequent turn out to be a first-time nationwide champion. And now they’ve instructed us that, if they’d a son heading off to play faculty basketball, the particular person they’d most belief to offer an excellent and helpful expertise is Painter.
Candid Coaches: Who would be the greatest faculty basketball participant in 2025-26?
Matt Norlander
None of that is stunning.
The reality is that there are plenty of glorious coaches working nice packages who double pretty much as good dudes — but it surely was not stunning to see Painter lead all vote-getters when this query was requested. For lack of a greater option to put it, individuals simply actually like and revel in him. I do not imply to color him as a saint, if solely as a result of I do not personally know any saints (and that looks as if a bizarre place to set the bar). However what I can inform you is that in 20-plus years of masking faculty basketball, I do not assume I’ve ever heard one other coach say something derogatory about Painter. He is each broadly revered as a coach and usually appreciated as a person. Not all people on this sport checks these bins whereas additionally being on observe to sometime turn out to be a Naismith Memorial Corridor of Famer. However Painter clearly does, and the outcomes of this last Candid Coaches query of 2025 illustrates as a lot.
Earlier 2025 Candid Coaches questions
