Final Four Notes
by Mike Douchant
Special to CBS SportsLine
March 27, 1997
Watch for new installments featuring notes surrounding the Final Four this week, exclusively on CBS SportsLine: In this package, we cover:
Arizona's Lute Olson and Kentucky's Rick Pitino already were among the 11 coaches to direct two different schools to the Final Four. Only two coaches took two different schools to the NCAA championship game--Frank McGuire, St. John's (runner-up in 1952) and North Carolina (champion in 1957), and Larry Brown, UCLA (runner-up in 1980) and Kansas (champion in 1988).
Here is an alphabetical list of the 11 successful
job-hopping coaches:
| Coach | First Final Four School | Second Final Four School |
| Forddy Anderson | Bradley '54 (2nd place) | Michigan State '57 (4th) |
| Gene Bartow | Memphis State '73 (2nd) | UCLA '76 (3rd) |
| Larry Brown | UCLA '80 (2nd) | Kansas '88 (1st) |
| Hugh Durham | Florida State '72 (2nd) | Georgia '83 (3rd*) |
| Jack Gardner | Kansas St. '48 (4th) & '51 (2nd) | Utah '61 (4th) & '66 (4th) |
| Lou Henson | New Mexico State '70 (3rd) | Illinois '89 (3rd*) |
| Frank McGuire | St. John's '52 (2nd) | North Carolina '57 (1st) |
| Lute Olson | Iowa '80 (4th) | Arizona '88 (3rd*), '94 (3rd*) & '97 |
| Rick Pitino | Providence '87 (3rd) | Kentucky '93 (3rd*), '96 (1st) & '97 |
| Lee Rose | UNC Charlotte '77 (4th) | Purdue '80 (3rd) |
| Eddie Sutton | Arkansas '78 (3rd) | Oklahoma State '95 (3rd*) |
*Tied for third place.
One job and done
Eleven of the 37 different coaches to win a national title through 1996, including North Carolina's Dean Smith among five active coaches, have spent their entire college head coaching careers at the same university.
Bud Foster, who had 13 non-winning seasons at Wisconsin,
is the only championship coach to finish his college career with
a losing record (265-267). Here is a list of the 11 championship
coaches to stay put at one college:
| Coach, School | Tenure | NCAA Title(s) |
| Adolph Rupp, Kentucky | 41 years | 1948, 1949, 1951 and 1958 |
| Nat Holman, CCNY | 37 years | 1950 |
| *Don Haskins, Texas-El Paso | 36 years | 1966 |
| *Dean Smith, North Carolina | 36 years | 1982 and 1993 |
| *Denny Crum, Louisville | 26 years | 1980 and 1986 |
| Vadal Peterson, Utah | 26 years | 1944 |
| Bud Foster, Wisconsin | 25 years | 1941 |
| *John Thompson, Georgetown | 25 years | 1984 |
| George Ireland, Loyola of Ill. | 24 years | 1963 |
| Fred Taylor, Ohio State | 18 years | 1960 |
| *Steve Fisher, Michigan | 9 years | 1989 |
*Active coaches.
Doing more with less
A comparison of Final Four appearances and the total of first- and second-team All-Americas some of the elite coaches have had in their careers reflects favorably on Denny Crum's achievements at Louisville. Of the seven head coaches to participate in at least five Final Fours, Crum is the only one not to have at least two more NCAA consensus first- and second-team All-Americas in his career than trips to the national semifinals.
No coach comes anywhere close to possessing the wealth of talent at Dean Smith's disposal with North Carolina. Here is an alphabetical list of the seven coaches with a minimum of five Final Fours (trips to the NCAA tournament and seasons as a head coach are included):
| Final Four | First- & Second-Team | |
| Coach, School(s) | Appearances | All-America Players |
| Denny Crum, Louisville | 6 in 21 trips | 7 in 26 seasons |
| Bob Knight, Indiana | 5 in 21 trips | 12 in 26 seasons at Indiana |
| Mike Krzyzewski, Duke | 7 in 13 trips | 12 in 17 seasons at Duke |
| Guy Lewis, Houston | 5 in 14 trips | 7 in 30 seasons |
| Adolph Rupp, Kentucky | 6 in 20 trips | 26 in 33 seasons* |
| Dean Smith, North Carolina | 11 in 27 trips | 28 in 36 seasons |
| John Wooden, UCLA | 12 in 16 trips | 17 in 27 seasons at UCLA |
*Rupp coached 41 years, but the first eight were before the NCAA
Tournament was introduced.
Keepers of the flame
All four coaches to guide Kentucky to the NCAA Tournament have winning playoff records with the Wildcats--Adolph Rupp (30-18 mark from 1942-'72), Joe B. Hall (20-9 from 1973-'85), Eddie Sutton (5-3 from 1986-'88) and Rick Pitino (21-4 from 1992 to 1997 Final Four). The only other school to have as many as three coaches direct teams to the tournament and all post winning playoff records with that institution is Dartmouth--Ozzie Cowles (4-3 from 1941-'43), Earl Brown (2-1 in 1944) and Doggie Julian (4-3 from 1956-'59).
Incidentally, Rupp is the only coach saddled with
more than five regional final losses. Rupp sustained eight such
setbacks from 1952 through 1972 by an average margin of 10 points.
He also incurred a national quarterfinal reversal in 1945 when
the first round of the eight-team event was identified as the
regional semifinals. Six of Rupp's first seven "field of
eight" defeats were against Big Ten teams, including Ohio
State four times. He compiled a losing playoff record (10-12)
after capturing his last NCAA title in 1958.