Active College Basketball Coaches With Most Career Wins
TJ Inman
Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, and Jay Wright have all retired from college basketball, leaving a hole at the sport’s top. While those giants have walked away, several bright stars continue adding to impressive win totals. This recurring article will keep track of the active college basketball coaches leading the way in career wins. Coach K sits atop the career leaderboard with 1,202 victories.
Head Coach and Number of Wins
Last Week’s Results (Monday through Sunday)
This Week’s Games (Monday through Sunday)
Jim Boeheim – 1,009 wins
Win at Louisville, Loss at Virginia
Wednesday vs. Virginia Tech, Saturday vs. Notre Dame
Bob Huggins – 926 wins
Loss at Oklahoma State, loss vs. Kansas
Wednesday vs. Baylor, Saturday at Oklahoma
John Calipari – 778 wins
Win over LSU, loss at Alabama
Tuesday vs. South Carolina, Saturday at Tennessee
Bill Self – 771 wins
Win at Texas Tech, win at West Virginia
Tuesday vs. Oklahoma, Saturday vs. Iowa State
Rick Barnes – 765 wins
Win over Mississippi State, Win at South Carolina
Tuesday vs. Vanderbilt, Saturday vs. Kentucky
The active coaches sitting top five in most wins is a list of some of the top names in basketball. Jim Boeheim has coached at Syracuse for nearly 50 years and continues adding double-digit wins each season. The time for him to walk away is undoubtedly approaching, and Syracuse is not winning at a rate that would allow him to threaten Coach K’s record.
The same could be said for West Virginia. Huggins is 69 years old, and while he has enjoyed success with the Mountaineers, WVU does not appear poised to start rattling off 30+ win seasons. Huggins will probably reach 1,000 victories, but it would be a shock if he got to 1,202.
The others are more than a stone’s throw behind that number but are all winning at a high rate. Kentucky fans get frustrated with John Calipari. He’s not winning as much as they’d like, but Calipari is still third among active head coaches and will keep climbing as Kentucky keeps winning. That being said, the Wildcats have struggled to beat good teams recently, and that trend continued on Saturday as they were boat-raced by Alabama. They play a terrible South Carolina team on Tuesday before traveling to Tennessee on Saturday.
Kansas’s Bill Self is the man with the most straightforward path to catching 1,202 wins. He is only 59 years old and winning at a good clip at one of the nation’s strongest basketball schools. Self would need to coach for another 14 seasons, winning 30 games per year, to become the all-time winningest coach. That would put him in his mid-70s. It’s unlikely but certainly not implausible. The Jayhawks knocked off Indiana in impressive fashion, and Self is just seven wins back of Calipari, with that number shrinking each week.
This article will be updated weekly as coaches like Dana Altman, Kelvin Sampson, Tom Izzo, and the five on this list rack up wins and prepare their teams for March.
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