Updated with Poll: The College Basketball Active Coaching Mount Rushmore
Update: As you may recall, we are trying to decide the active coaching Mount Rushmore (see below or click here). So far, we have selected Coach K, Tom Izzo, and Rick Pitino. We need help deciding the fourth member of the group. We have had good arguments for Jim Boeheim, John Calipari, Billy Donovan, and Roy Williams. We will decide via the following poll. As they say in Chicago, vote early and often… ha ha ha. Thanks in advance.
Thanks again!
Original article:
In the past, the Confidential had some fun with Mount Rushmores for each ACC school. We picked three spots and let fans pick the 4th spot. Today, the focus is on college basketball as a whole–specifically, the active coaches. It should be pretty easy to guess a few of the names, but rounding out the 4th (and eliminating the others in the process) may be difficult. In any event, here is the list… you can vote on who gets #4.
The first spot… Coach K.
There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. This is how we described him over a year ago:
If it needs to be explained, you haven’t been following sports since Jimmy Carter was running the country. You want longevity? 30+ years at Duke. You want success? The most wins of any mens’ basketball coach ever. You want national titles? How about four of them for Duke in his tenure. Throw in some gold medals and the absence of serious controversy, and you’ve got yourself one of the easiest Mount Rushmore spots ever.
This applies to active basketball coaching as well. More recently, he is now over 1,000 wins and is back in the running for another national title.
The second spot… Tom Izzo.
Sure, this is a bit knee-jerk. But Izzo just took a 7-seed to the Final Four. “Only” one national championship, but how about seven Final Fours in 20 years of coaching. And 9 Elite Eights and 13 Sweet Sixteens. Other than Coach K, who else has that kind of resume?
Well, maybe the next guy. The third spot… Rick Pitino.
Pitino has two championships, one with Kentucky and one with Louisville. Pitino also has seven Final Fours, including one with Providence. Like Izzo, there is a sense (well-founded) that Louisville will be a better team in March than December.
The fourth spot? The Confidential will leave this to you. Here are some names to consider voting for the 4th spot:
- Jim Boeheim
- Roy Williams
- John Calipari
- Billy Donovan
- Bill Self
- Thad Matta
- Bob Huggins
- Anyone else?
Anyway, let us know who deserves the 4th spot and why…
The Confidential 
I think the way to look at answering this poll question is this: Assuming age is not a factor, of the names above who among them if they left their current job and took over a sputtering program like FSU or Wake or GT, would do the best job in turning said program into a national title contender without getting your team in trouble with the NCAA? When you think of it like that, it has to be Donovan. Now if you do not care how it gets done, then its Calipari.