College Basketball: Top 5 candidates for AP Coach of the Year

In a season full of good teams, there are five college basketball coaches who have made their teams and themselves stand out as the best in the nation.

One of the most open NCAA college basketball seasons is now entering its stretch run. Constantly changing is how many would describe it. With very few great teams throughout the land, this has been a season where literally anyone can win on any given night.

Long gone are the thoughts of undefeated seasons and perfect conference records, replaced by the thought of just making it to the big dance this March for some. In a year of change, traditional powers Duke, Connecticut, and Indiana have been replaced in the nation’s top-25 by non-traditional powers Iowa, Oregon and Texas A&M.

With so much change sweeping across the nation this season, it has become an almost forgone conclusion that the streak of first time Coach of the Year winners will undoubtedly continue. However, there are more than a few of the perennial contenders to still consider. Bill Self’s Kansas squad currently sits in the top-10 while Roy Williams’ preseason No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels remain a major threat to take the ACC crown.

In fact, the more we look at the current state of college basketball the more we can see of its current place in the world. A mixture of the old-guard and the new contenders find themselves mixed-and-matched together throughout the current AP Top-25 rankings. Should this mixture continue, it will definitely be an extremely competitive race for the Coach of the Year award.

With the league so closely bunched together in terms of skill and ability, losing a single game from here to the end of the season could be enough to take a coach out of the race. However, beginning to perform now and making a deep run at their respective conference title could just be enough to propel a coach to the top of the list and to victory in the Coach of the Year race.

Next: Ed Cooley, Providence