" title="Spartans Weblog">Spartans Weblog

A statistical look at Michigan State basketball, with a dash of football talk

An impressive list

Posted by kj on Monday, March 30th, 2009

SpartanDan did the follow-up work.  Coaches who have made the Final Four with (at least) three different completely distinct rosters of active players:

- John Wooden (UCLA ‘62, ‘67, ‘71, ‘75)
- Dean Smith (UNC ‘67, ‘72, ‘77, ‘81, ‘91, ‘95)
- Mike Krzyzewski* (Duke ‘86, ‘90, ‘94, ‘99, ‘04)
- Denny Crum (Louisville ‘72, ‘80, ‘86)
- Adolph Rupp (Kentucky ‘42, ‘48, ‘58, ‘66)
- Roy Williams* (Kansas ‘91, ‘02, UNC ‘05, ‘09)
- Bob Knight (Indiana ‘73, ‘81, ‘87, ‘92)
- Lute Olson (Iowa ‘80, Arizona ‘88, ‘94, ‘01)
- Rick Pitino* (Providence ‘87, Kentucky ‘93, ‘97, Louisville ‘05)
- Jack Gardner (Kansas St. ‘48, Utah ‘61, ‘66)
- Jerry Tarkanian (UNLV ‘77, ‘87, ‘91)
- Forddy Anderson (Bradley ‘50, ‘54, MSU ‘57)
- Jim Boeheim* (Syracuse ‘87, ‘96, ‘03)
- Eddie Sutton (Arkansas ‘78, Oklahoma St. ‘95, ‘04)
- Jim Calhoun* (UConn ‘99, ‘04, ‘09)
- Tom Izzo* (MSU ‘99, ‘05, ‘09)

*Active

That’s a who’s who of college basketball coaches.  Just 16 of them.  Ever. And we’ve got one.

Let us perish the thought that he will ever depart the shadows of our ivy covered halls.

« « Louisville Game Recap (3/29/09) | Monday Night Links » »

Tags:

Filed in commentary9 responses so far

9 Responses to “An impressive list”

  1. mapmanon 30 Mar 2009 at 2:44 pm 1

    Oops! We have two…Forddy brought us our first!

  2. tagon 30 Mar 2009 at 3:23 pm 2

    http://www.cbssports.com/colle.....y/11569528

    We might not have to worry about UK if Calipari takes the job first.

  3. Benon 30 Mar 2009 at 4:02 pm 3

    The idea of Calipari at Kentucky is scary, at least until he goes Harrick on the program.

  4. kjon 30 Mar 2009 at 4:06 pm 4

    Agreed, Ben. To me, Kentucky and Calipari are a match made in heaven (well, maybe not heaven) in terms of what he would do to the program.

    Trivia: Did you know Calipari was born in Moon Township–the location of Robert Morris University?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Calipari

  5. Mark in DCon 30 Mar 2009 at 5:18 pm 5

    So KJ, I know you’re giving up the blog, but I’m hoping that the banner up top featuring great Spartan players remains when the new collaborative edition is rolled out. Who from the current team will grace the pantheon?

    It’s a tough choice but I think Suton would get my vote, but I could live with Lucas or Walton.

  6. Uncle Omaron 30 Mar 2009 at 6:11 pm 6

    The game plan MSU used yesterday to break the ‘Ville press comes straight out of the Scott Skiles playbook. Go to http::/vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com and go poking around in the old Final Four articles. In this case, specifically the 2000 article. In it, Coach Izzo said he received a 2:00 AM phone call from Skiles who told him how he had broken the Celtics/Pitino press while head coach of the Suns. It was have the pg inbound, then get it back to him immediately. Izzo didn’t use it against Florida, but he brought it out of mothballs when faced with Pitino this time. Which, is probably why the staff told Gus and Len before the game that they weren’t worried about the Louisville press, because they had shredded the Florida press in ‘00. And this time they were going with the Skiles attack.

  7. kjon 30 Mar 2009 at 8:51 pm 7

    Mark, I can reveal nothing about the new site at this point. As to future installation of current players into the Spartan pantheon, I will say this: #1 will hang from the Breslin rafters one day.

  8. Mark in DCon 31 Mar 2009 at 9:36 am 8

    OK, you can be coy, but I think there is a distinct lack of front court players up there on that banner (Steve Smith, unless I’m mistaken, is the only one) so I though Suton might help balance things out in that regard. His tourney performance makes him worthy, although I think we’ve had other guys who were slightly better over the course of their careers (Andre Hutson springs to mind – I always thought he was criminally underrated; and of course Davis despite the flack he took was very good). #1 deserves a spot too I agree – if he stays through his senior year I see a high probability of another final four in the future. If we keep winning at this rate you’ll run out of space, but that’s a pretty good problem to have.

  9. kjon 31 Mar 2009 at 10:03 am 9

    The ideas behind the banner was to highlight our legacy of great back court play. We’ve had at least one all-Big Ten-level guard on the roster on nearly ever team over the last 25 years. So the big guys weren’t considered.