NCAA basketball: Ranking the 25 best college basketball coaches ever

No. 10: Hank Iba

Any time a coach has a national award of such high importance named after him, it’s safe to assume he was a pretty decent coach.

Henry “Hank” Iba finds his way onto our list with an incredibly impressive resume, and one of the few that spans multiple competitions inside the game, and multiple sports to boot! Iba was best known for his success as a basketball coach at what was then Oklahoma A&M but was also an Athletic Director for Oklahoma A&M at the same time.

Amassing 751 wins over a coaching career that also saw Iba’s Oklahoma A&M teams win two NCAA Tournaments, and reach four total Final Fours, his teams became the first to win consecutive NCAA titles, and also featured the game’s first seven-foot-tall player in Bob Kurland.

I can’t name Henry Iba without talking about his coaching tree, either. His tree features legends Larry Brown, Jack Hartman, Don Haskins, Knight and Sutton amongst others including even passing the tradition to his own son, Moe.

In 1994, Iba had the “Henry Iba Award” named after him by the United States Basketball Writers Association, and in 1994 the Rotary Club of Tulsa established a Citizen of the Year award in honor of him.

Inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1969, Iba was a star in the coaching realm for the United States Olympic Team, too, leading them to two gold medals in 1964 and 1968 and a silver in 1972.