Who is the best college basketball coach of all time: Mike Krzyzewski or John Wooden?

When their careers are looked at closely, Mike Krzyzewski’s ranks ahead of John Wooden’s. 

Mike Krzyzewski will walk off the court at the end of the 2021-2022 season, his 42nd at Duke, and head into retirement as the greatest coach in the history of college basketball. Even greater than UCLA’s John Wooden. No, Krzyzewski’s five national championships can’t compare to John Wooden’s 10. However, it’s critical to look at the numbers with proper context and perspective while considering the difference between the two eras.

Wooden’s 27 seasons at UCLA produced a 664-162 record for a winning percentage of 80.8. Krzyzewski’s record in his 41 years at Duke is 1,097-302, a winning percentage of 78.4 percent. Wooden won 10 national championships, including seven in a row, all in a 12-year stretch between 1964-1975.

Krzyzewski has so far won five titles in Durham. Wooden coached seven Player of the Year Award winners while Krzyzewski has coached eight. Wooden produced 16 Consensus All-Americans while Krzyzewski has coached 23. There are the numbers, now it’s time to discuss the differences in the eras.

Mike Krzyzewski vs. John Wooden: Who is the best NCAA basketball coach?

The biggest difference is a doozy. Wooden never had to deal with players leaving early for the NBA or the transfer portal. The reason that Lew Alcindor and Bill Walton were three-time All-Americans and not four-time wasn’t because they left for the NBA. It was because freshmen weren’t eligible to play on the varsity. The 1965-1966 UCLA freshmen team, starring Alcindor, beat the varsity by 30 points. The two-time defending NCAA champion UCLA Bruin varsity team. By 30 points.

Duke’s 2001 team, led by sophomores Jay Williams, Mike Dunleavy and Carlos Boozer, won Krzyzewski’s third championship. All three left the next year with a year of eligibility left.

Elton Brand was the first to leave Duke as a freshman when he was the No. 1 pick in the 1999 NBA Draft. Now, freshmen leave early all the time.

In 2015, the national champions lost three of their top four scorers when Jahlil Okafor, Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones all left after their freshman year.

The 2018-2019 team lost their top three scorers when Zion Williamson, Cam Reddish and RJ Barrett left after their freshman year. Again, don’t lose sight of the fact that two of the greatest players in college basketball history stayed at UCLA for four years.

The NCAA Tournament was very different in Wooden’s day also. The Bruins had to win four games to win the championship compared to the six-game streak that Krzyzewski had to accomplish.

The 68-team tournament that we know only had 23 teams in three of Wooden’s years, 25 in six of the years and then 32 in his last year, 1975. And here’s the clincher, for most of those years, only one team from a conference could qualify for the tournament.

In 1972 Maryland was 27-5 and ranked 14th in the final AP poll. In 1974 they were 23-5 and lost 103-100 in overtime to eventual national champion North Carolina State in the ACC Tournament title game. The Terrapins were fourth in the final AP poll. You guessed it, they didn’t make the NCAA Tournament in either of those years.

In short, it was easier for Wooden to win then than it was for Krzyzewski to win in the modern era.

Back in Wooden’s day, it was a recruiting edge that UCLA was on TV, something taken for granted now. Wooden didn’t have to deal with the media or the internet or AAU coaches and handlers. It was a very different world back then and it’s impossible to ignore those differences.

Wooden deserves credit for assembling those teams, but once he had a great team, he had them for four years. Krzyzewski has had to deal with annual turnover. That’s why Krzyzewski is the greatest coach in the history of college basketball.

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