5 best NCAA basketball coaches that never won a national championship

2. Best NCAA basketball coaches without a ring: Eddie Sutton (Creighton 1969-1974, Arkansas 1974-1985, Kentucky 1985-1989, Oklahoma State 1990-2006, San Francisco 2007-2008)

Another Hall-of-Famer, Eddie Sutton was an incredible basketball coach. Sutton’s career on the sidelines (including stints at high schools and junior colleges) lasted six decades, enabling him to do plenty of winning.

The first job that Sutton got at the Division I level was at Creighton back in 1969, where he posted five straight winning seasons at a perennial loser. After getting the Bluejays to the NCAA Tournament in 1974, Sutton was hired at Arkansas to be their next head coach.

Sutton was dominant with the Razorbacks, winning 260 of the 335 games he coached there. Arkansas’ best season under Sutton came in 1978 when the Razorbacks went 32-4 and lost to the eventual national champion Kentucky Wildcats in the Final Four.

Kentucky would be Sutton’s next stop and he got off to a hot start before a massive academic scandal ended his time in Lexington after just four years. Sutton returned to his alma mater next, guiding Oklahoma State to 13 NCAA Tournament appearances, including another trip to the Final Four in 2004 where the Cowboys lost by a bucket to Georgia Tech.

All told, Sutton won 804 games and became the first head coach ever to take four separate schools to the NCAA Tournament. The only thing Sutton never accomplished was winning a national championship.