This should be an interesting discussion.
Artificial Intelligence and Coaches
- Thread starter tarheel0910
- Start date
...or not as "intelligent" as advertised.
Roy might not deserve to be ahead of the rat, rupp, and gilbert (er... wooden), but Dean sure as Heel does!
As an educator I can say from experience that ChatGPT is an impressive tool but it isn't as intelligent as peeps think it is. Students are flocking to it to do their homework for them, but it often reveals a shocking lack of depth! (It is also easy to tell) That list is one more proof that it takes a human to really understand the difference between greatness and success! Rupp and Wooden shouldn't even be on the list since they failed the ethics component. I would of course have DES as #1, but I really have no issue with the rest of the list.
Coach Smith is the greatest innovator and teacher of the game in coaching history. He started analytics in all sports. I could name so many different things that he created that is used in all of basketball worldwide. I just wish he wouldn’t have retired relatively early. If he didn’t do that then I think he adds 2 to 4 more titles depending on how long he coached. Coach Smith is the Greatest Coach ever for what he did for all of basketball and not to mention what he did for human rights. Offensive to put Rupp before him. People also forget that he was putting players early in the NBA way before dook or kensucky did on a regular basis. dook put their first player early into the NBA in 1999 and K lost his mind when it happened. UNC was doing that in the 70’s. Coach Smith always put his players before himself. Does Michael play his Senior year if Coach Smith advised him to stay? Of course he does. Coach Smith was a better person than he was a Coach and that right there puts him in a class by himself.
Dean 24 - 14 vs k
Dean 5 - 2 vs rupp
just sayin...
Dean 5 - 2 vs rupp
just sayin...
Agreed. The issue with the list is it's strictly based on numbers, which takes away other aspects of coaching. But if you're going strictly by numbers and nothing else, then it's not a terrible list. Did you happen to notice how many schools have multiple coaches on the list?
...and he didn't have "help" getting his players.
The big case that can be made for Wooden is that UCLA had very little basketball history before he arrived. In contrast, Rat-Face was the 3rd Dook coach to reach the Final Four, and Dean was the 3rd UNC coach to reach the Final Four. IU had 2 NCAA titles before Knight arrived.
Calhoun also built from nothing.
Even Georgetown had a national Championship Game appearance before Thompson.
Calhoun also built from nothing.
Even Georgetown had a national Championship Game appearance before Thompson.
That list isn’t terrible. Izzo doesn’t belong there and neither does John Thompson. I’d have Dean and Roy a spot or two higher.
So who are your replacements? I would probably put Jay Wright and Pitino on there if we are basing it on numbers.
I asked the Bing AI search for coaches with 400 wins and a win rate above 70%. Here's what I got:
Then I asked for more and got
I tried again and got no more hits.
At a glance it seems that the AI search have put them in order of number of wins rather than win rate. Maybe that's because of the way I asked the question.
Here are the sources it showed.
Source: Conversation with Bing, 5/25/2023
(1) Men's DI college basketball coaches with the most wins.
(2) List of college men's basketball coaches with 600 wins.
(3) Greatest College Basketball Coaches by Career Win Percentage - Stadium Talk.
According to my sources, some college basketball coaches with more than 400 wins and a win rate of at least 70% include **Mike Krzyzewski** with a win rate of **0.766**¹, **Jim Boeheim** with a win rate of **0.701**¹, and **Roy Williams** with a win rate of **0.774**¹.
Then I asked for more and got
Some other college basketball coaches with more than 400 wins and a win rate of at least 70% include **Dean Smith** with a win rate of **0.776**, **Adolph Rupp** with a win rate of **0.822**, and **Bob Knight** with a win rate of **0.709**.
I tried again and got no more hits.
At a glance it seems that the AI search have put them in order of number of wins rather than win rate. Maybe that's because of the way I asked the question.
Here are the sources it showed.
Source: Conversation with Bing, 5/25/2023
(1) Men's DI college basketball coaches with the most wins.
(2) List of college men's basketball coaches with 600 wins.
(3) Greatest College Basketball Coaches by Career Win Percentage - Stadium Talk.
If anyone is wondering, Jim Calhoun and Bob Huggins just missed the cut because they are fractionally below the 70% cutoff I set for my search.
I don't know why the search engine didn't spit out Rick Pitino with 711 wins and a 70.1% W-L rate.
AI search engines, eh? Good, but not quite ready for prime time.
I don't know why the search engine didn't spit out Rick Pitino with 711 wins and a 70.1% W-L rate.
AI search engines, eh? Good, but not quite ready for prime time.
How many HIS victories vs cream puffs did ratface have? 250, 300… more than that?
Did he win his last game ever at HIS? Did he win his last game EVER?
l’m just asking for a friend.
Did he win his last game ever at HIS? Did he win his last game EVER?
l’m just asking for a friend.
Maybe it didn't include him because he's still coaching? Or maybe it couldn't figure out the right number to use because of the vacated games.
Izzo actually has 8 Final Fours, which is impressive. But he's only come away with the title once. He's kind of like Dean in that regard but Dean was an unmatched innovator of the game. And it's not like MSU was some nothing program before he got there. He's made MSU a consistently B+ program. And he gets on my nerves.
You could make a case for the following over Izzo:
Denny Crum (6 Final Fours and 2 championships), Rick Pitino (7 and 2, three different programs), Henry Iba (4 and 2), Jay Wright (4 and 2), Lute Olsen (5 and 2, two different programs). Maybe even Boeheim and Donovan.
I would have Roy ahead of Bob Knight. Roy won a lot of games in different eras. Bob Knight really didn't do much after 1990. But I've always viewed Bob Knight as a pretty overrated coach when it came to these discussions. Also, a ton of meh (or as I like to say fake good) 20-12 seasons from Bob Knight.
Hard to judge the old old coaches like Rupp to me. He coached in an era when teams didn't play 35+ games a season. So much of this is about stacking wins and guys who coached before 1970 had fewer games to stack wins.
These lists should ultimately be judged by wins and losses though. If it's about "innovating the game", then Steph Curry is probably the greatest basketball player ever.
Hard to judge the old old coaches like Rupp to me. He coached in an era when teams didn't play 35+ games a season. So much of this is about stacking wins and guys who coached before 1970 had fewer games to stack wins.
These lists should ultimately be judged by wins and losses though. If it's about "innovating the game", then Steph Curry is probably the greatest basketball player ever.
Innovation in the sense of creating strategies that change the game of college bball has absolutely no relation to a person working hard to be a great shooter! DES used a strategy that forced them to actually change the game by requiring a shot clock! Shaq or Wilt would have been better choices because they changed the lane for Wilt and allowed zones for Shaq-BUT these are still just players being born with extra gifts and not through creative innovation! It is almost impossible to compare wins/losses across eras BUT it is easy to see who cheated, who bullied, or proved to be biased and who proved to be one of the best humans we have ever met! Character is certainly part of greatness but it isn't required for success! Equivocating at this point means you either are arguing for the sake of argument (=trolling) or you lack discernment! I'm OK with AI using some metrics to determine a flawed list, but humans should be able to evaluate the entire body of work! Knight, Rupp, and Wooden shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence as DES! Roy > Knight any way you slice it too!
Even more. If he is not deserving then Dean's is less impressive as well. If people are just looking at titles? I'm all Dean all day, but the selective record head to head by some earlier while leaving out the negative head to head is cherry picking.
I am more of the full record. I think it is a pretty solid list. Dean is my favorite, but I'm biased.
Fair point, he had great success at Kansas but he had Zero championships there, & 3 at UNC. I think that’s what the majority of his ranking is based on.
Just saying he is not ranked there without his Kansas years. Maybe 65/35 split. 70/ 30 at most. He needs a KU/UNC listing.
Idk dtodd, I don’t see anyone in 7-10 jumping above him without his ku years. Still three chips in his significant years he came back.
Possibly, but it would take an awful big chunk from his wins total with that impressive %. Along with Final Fours trips/runner ups.
Damn… When did you hate UNC??? Dookie!?!?!??!???!!!?!!?!!????
Dean and Roy had a better winning % than Ratty, and coached 11 and 14 years less than him.
so you're basing coaching prowess on winning % alone? 🤣 in that case, Tark the Shark and Mark Few were way better coaches than Dean and Roy. see, it doesnt work that way.
Dean and Ratface: their winning % is nearly identical (77.6 & 76.9) ... the fact that Rat coached longer AND kept that winning % actually supports my argument.
the only stats that matter are titles, plain and simple. i love Dean, got to play golf with him and attend his coaching camps growing up, would want my son to play for him before any other coach in history ... but if you're talking national success, he underachieved bigtime.
i hate the Rat but i can be objective.
I've hesitated to reply to your first poast above because it's ...uncomfortable.
I tend to agree with you about Dean underachieving. Sort of. He did make 11 Final Fours compared to K's 12. What one can take from that is that Dean was more often in the mix for a championship than was K. Seeing that K coached 47 seasons and Dean coached 36 seasons, that's a point in Dean's favor. The same argument could be made about ACC titles as well. Dean had 17 reg season titles in 36 years. K had 13 in 42 years. Dean had 13 ACC Tournament titles in 36 years. K had 15 in 42 years.
Secondly, you can't ignore that head-to-head record. If it were close or if those games had taken place at the end of one's career or the beginning of one's career, then maybe that shouldn't factor. But Dean had a commanding head-to-head record against K while both were at the peak of the profession. Dean finished strong against K so you can't say Dean piled up wins while K was getting his feet wet.
Lastly, I also look at impact. Dean's impact was far greater than K's. Maybe that's just because of the times in which each coached, but thems the breaks. The number of players that Dean put in the NBA and then the success of those NBA players and his coaching tree looking like a Sequoia are arguments in favor of Dean. Sure, K put a lot of players in the NBA as well but it was later in his career versus earlier and in a time when future NBA players had been identified in high school, staying only one year at duke and being less of a K "development" and more of a K recruiting win. There is nuance to this discussion.
With that said, 5 is significantly better than 2. It just is. I happen to believe that Dean might just have been unlucky on a few occasions but one could make the argument that he was lucky in the 2 championship wins (Fred Brown and Chris Webber with the assists).
without a doubt the intangibles matter when choosing who was the better PERSON ... i was talking purely statistics.
so you believe that Tark and Few were / are better coaches than Dean? wow. THAT is a hot take.
Folks want to look at who coached the most wins and consider them to be the greater coaches, I don't think a lot of younger fans realize that it isn't just that simple, comparing Dean to Few or K or who ever is simply not apples to apples. Dean coached at a time that for a long while you had only 16 teams in the NCAAT, you had to win the ACC tourney to qualify to play in the NCAAT, 1 team per conference, get upset in your conference tourney you were looking at playing in the NIT. How many more wins would Dean have had had they had as many teams in the NCAAT then, could there have been more NCAAT championships?
Don't forget, winning the ACCT was no easy feat in itself, it was what I consider the hey day of the ACC. There simply were so great teams, we had not just duke teams to worry about but NC State was big time, some great Wake teams, Lefty always had Maryland primed to win big, great UVa teams, even Clemson had some really great teams, as did Wake. The ACCT was a THRILL RIDE every season, a can't miss string of games that gave every fan white knuckles. Some of our best teams got upset in the ACCT and never got a shot at the NCAA Natty. Now days the ACC is no where as esteemed but back in those days of Dean hawking the side lines at Carmichael, the ACC was the unquestioned best league in college basketball, you had to endure a murders row of great teams just to get to the NCAAT.
People forget, there was this power house program that Dean had to beat if he was going to get a natty, UCLA! UCLA was the combination of great coaching and the best players MONEY COULD BUY. What UConn was a few years ago in the woman's game, UCLA was to the men's game during a large swath of Dean's coaching career. UCLA was a machine, fed the best players in the country and they were not only bought and paid for but it was a time that most players stayed in college for their full 4yrs eligibility (well 3yrs because freshmen were not eligible). How can I explain to you how much an advantage it was to have Lew Alcindor play 3yrs for you, Bill Walton play 4yrs for you and those guys surrounded by great players at every position. You are talking about UCLA teams that could play most NBA teams of the time head up and win consistently. John Wooden, was a good coach but it sure helped getting by far more talent than anyone else was able to assemble and that talent played for you for 4seasons? Outside of games UNC played in, there are 4 games I not only will never forget but 4 of the best games I have ever watched and 2 of them included UCLA. 1 of those games was Adrian Dantley's ND win at ND over UCLA and why do I have that game so burned in to my mind, it was a game that UCLA lost. Imagine having a team so good that a mere regular season loss on the road is still burned in to the minds of fans and their own team was not in any way a part of the game. Folks that is how high the bar was back then.
Don't forget, winning the ACCT was no easy feat in itself, it was what I consider the hey day of the ACC. There simply were so great teams, we had not just duke teams to worry about but NC State was big time, some great Wake teams, Lefty always had Maryland primed to win big, great UVa teams, even Clemson had some really great teams, as did Wake. The ACCT was a THRILL RIDE every season, a can't miss string of games that gave every fan white knuckles. Some of our best teams got upset in the ACCT and never got a shot at the NCAA Natty. Now days the ACC is no where as esteemed but back in those days of Dean hawking the side lines at Carmichael, the ACC was the unquestioned best league in college basketball, you had to endure a murders row of great teams just to get to the NCAAT.
People forget, there was this power house program that Dean had to beat if he was going to get a natty, UCLA! UCLA was the combination of great coaching and the best players MONEY COULD BUY. What UConn was a few years ago in the woman's game, UCLA was to the men's game during a large swath of Dean's coaching career. UCLA was a machine, fed the best players in the country and they were not only bought and paid for but it was a time that most players stayed in college for their full 4yrs eligibility (well 3yrs because freshmen were not eligible). How can I explain to you how much an advantage it was to have Lew Alcindor play 3yrs for you, Bill Walton play 4yrs for you and those guys surrounded by great players at every position. You are talking about UCLA teams that could play most NBA teams of the time head up and win consistently. John Wooden, was a good coach but it sure helped getting by far more talent than anyone else was able to assemble and that talent played for you for 4seasons? Outside of games UNC played in, there are 4 games I not only will never forget but 4 of the best games I have ever watched and 2 of them included UCLA. 1 of those games was Adrian Dantley's ND win at ND over UCLA and why do I have that game so burned in to my mind, it was a game that UCLA lost. Imagine having a team so good that a mere regular season loss on the road is still burned in to the minds of fans and their own team was not in any way a part of the game. Folks that is how high the bar was back then.
LOL
From Rupp’s Rafters. They are soooooo done with Cal but his buyout is ginormous. Gotta love it.
That is a freakin clown show going on in Lexington, simnply put they gave a life time contract wiht a mega buyout for what may be the worst college coach in the business, certainly the most over hyped coach out there. You do have to give kalipari credit, he conned the heck out of them and got paid the deep pocket cash. What those folks at Ky didn't seem to realize is that all Kalipari has ever done is exploit the rules, figured out how to break the rules and get away with it and when caught he just skipped to another program. Kal got great talent because Kal had great talent bought, paid for, and delivered to him via WWW, stared at Memphis and carried on thru Ky.
At Umass, Kal was working the grade factory schools, getting those guys that could not make admissions at other schools and if grades needed to be changed so the guy could pass thru admissions oh, look the other way, nothing to see here? LOL Kals claim to fame should be how to cheat and get away with it, he was really good at that, may be the only aspect of being a head coach he was good at. K decided that he would out bid Kal for players and all of the sudden K was getting the bets of the best talents and the press gave K more cover than they gave kal, I find that particular fully! LOL
Ky fans are a strange bunch, they didn't really care how Kal got his players, they didn't care if Kal cheated to get those talents in to play for their beloved program AS LONG AS HE WON BIG TIME WITH THEM. But now Ky is not dominating the SEC with superior talent, now some coaching is needed and Kal has no answers, now basically ALL programs can buy players, Kal, K, and Self's lock on being able to get the best game changing talents has eroded, now they have to out bid other programs and Ky does not seem able or willing to out bid. Kal seems to me to be seriously out gunned now for portal guys that really make a difference, he struck gold getting Oscar from the portal but after last season those Ky fans were ready to see Oscar go? LOL
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