General Sports Water Cooler

well, after K but I've been on the Self wagon for years. Even with a bad hair piece, the guy is a miracle worker.

He probably is. Getting this Kansas team to the final is one hell of a coaching job.

This team is nowhere near as bad as people think

Huh? It's a miracle Bill Self was able to win with the players that turd Bill Self recruited.

They don't have super elite talent.

Why shouldn't we be doing this?

But then there's defense, and they're the best team in the country at that, so it's not all that stunning at all.

After K, it's basically Self and/or Izzo. They are head and shoulders above the rest right now.

I think Self is a very good coach, probably second tier and right outside the elite, but find myself again picking him apart because everyone here has a major hard-on for him. He's not as good as this board thinks he is (or at least not as accomplished).

I don't care about regular season "titles" in the Big XII. Just like the ACC (and every other conference I know of outside of the Ivy), there is no such thing as a regular season title. The conferences award their title to the team that wins the conference tournament. I've always felt fans who claim regular season "titles" - even our own fans - do so because they have nothing of substance to claim. Ignoring that fact, it's a specious claim because 3 of those "titles" are shared - and in each one of those instances, the team they were "tied" with record wise owned the tiebreaker after having beaten the Jayhawks head-to-head. That's not much of a "championship." On top of that, the Big XII is historically a football conference. I don't care about Kansas's ability to beat Kansas State, Iowa State, Oklahoma, Texas Tech, etc. in basketball. Yawn.

You cite his two trips to Monday night, but his first trip is marred by the probation his team was on (and which was extended after they won the championship), not to mention he used a player who should have been ruled ineligible. How a player can not pass HS but become and stay eligible at the college level is beyond me, but because he was a sophomore, it was somehow OK. I can't take anything away from this trip, however. They've outperformed many expectations, including my own.

Five thirty win seasons. Again, he's doing it in the Big XII. At Kansas. You're supposed to win games at Kansas - they rank #2 all time in college basketball wins and #3 in win percentage. Do you know the only coach who didn't win at Kansas? James Naismith. The guy who invented the game is literally the worst coach in KU history. Every other coach they've ever had has a winning record. You just win games at Kansas. Not winning games at Kansas is tougher than winning them! While 30 wins is a great achievement, it is not the end-all-be-all of statistics, and again, the best coach in the game should win 30 at one of the best programs.

It's interesting how this board tears down a guy like Calipari for the same reasons they build up Self. His EIGHT 30-win seasons are discounted because they happened in C-USA or the A-10, for the most part. His four trips to the Final Four are counted as two because two were officially taken away by the NCAA, including his first trip - of two - to the Monday Night finale.

I'm not saying Calipari is the best (I do think he's better than Self). But to list these "accomplishments" for Self as if they have any more meaning than what Calipari has accomplished is absurd. If you think those stats speak to Self's greatness, then why not consider Calipari even greater?

Regardless, Self is a very good coach. But let's cool it on the "best" talk, especially while that rat is still the coach in Durham.

LOL!

Their road to the Final Four was 3 double digit seeds and a team starting Stilman White at point guard in a virtual home game.

Great job beating an Ohio State team with a similar talent level and turd Sullinger who cost himself millions of dollars by coming back. If he pulls a true miracle and beats Kentucky, I'll give him a lot of credit, but given the charmed path to the final four...it doesn't prove he's the best coach out there by any stretch.

I'd wager more on Bill Self never winning another title that I would on him getting to 3.

He's done a helluva job this year but his road to the Final Four was cake and I missed this thread the last two years when he choked with maybe the best team in the tournament to Northern Iowa and Virginia Commonwealth.

I'm not sure what you mean by saying there are no regular season titles. There most certainly are - it's quite easy to go into the Big XII media guide and see their listing of regular season champions, starting with Kansas at 11. The fact of the matter is that winning a regular season is a much better accomplishment than winning a conference tournament, unless you want to argue that Vanderbilt and Florida State ought to be happier with their regular seasons than Kentucky and North Carolina. And of course it's not as if Self doesn't have five tournament championships anyway.

Acting as if winning in the Big XII isn't a huge accomplishment is also fairly ridiculous. Since the ACC expanded to 12 teams, the Big XII has had MORE participants in the NCAA tournament. It's been a top 3 basketball league in almost every season since Self arrived.

You're absolutely right that you'r supposed to win games at Kansas. And Bill Self does. They've had a lot of great coaches, and Self has won at a SIGNIFICANTLY higher clip than any of the others. Higher than Roy, higher than Larry Brown, and higher than Phog Allen.

Anyway, I would agree that Calipari is in the top 3, but of course he gets far less credit for winning lots of games in mid-major conferences than he does for winning now in the SEC or Self does in the Big XII, and his transgressions are a lot more severe than the minor ones you're adamant about with Self.

In the last 55 years:
Big 12: 2 National Championships by its members
NC State: 2 National Championships