As soon as once more CBS Sports activities presents our annual Candid Coaches sequence, which spotlights related subjects and points in males’s school basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled roughly 100 coaches in latest weeks on quite a lot of topics. Coaches spoke on background and had been supplied anonymity to supply unfiltered opinions. That is the second installment in our 2025 survey.
Media retailers typically publish an inventory of the perfect coaches in school basketball that is formed largely by publicly out there data like wins and championships. These are all the time subjective but additionally fairly simple to do with kind of the identical names slotted close to the highest every time.
However who’re the nice guys?
Not simply good coaches but additionally good males, you recognize, the kind of individuals you would not thoughts your son enjoying for sometime, and spending 4 years with sometime, if he developed right into a respectable basketball prospect. A random particular person in all probability has no grasp for tips on how to reply that query with out actual relationships all through the game. However are you aware who has actual relationships all through the game?
Coaches!
So, with that in thoughts, Matt Norlander and I requested greater than 100 school coaches the next query:
In case your son had been a participant, which school coach would you need him to spend 4 years with?
(NOTE: A listing of greater than a dozen coaches accounted for the opposite 21% of the vote.)
Quotes that stood out
On Matt Painter:
- “He is like a brother to me. [He’s] one of the vital real, well-spoken, compassionate, empathetic [people]. Elite thinker [and] elite coach who has produced with much less and … his player-development, and the way he will get these children to remain, is superb to me. He is a very, actually good human being.”
- “Glorious coach. Higher particular person. Man of integrity. Tells his gamers what they should hear, not what they need to hear. Genuinely cares about his program and the sport of school basketball. Gamers have an amazing understanding of their job.”
- “His program is on the highest degree and has proven that they’re doing the correct issues to retain gamers. So they’re having an amazing expertise, will develop and get higher, and can all the time hear the reality.”
On Tom Izzo:
- “Izzo embraces old skool and new faculty. He teaches the sport the correct approach — and I believe he has the final word respect of his gamers. You get coach Izzo for all times should you play for him.”
- “If he desires to teach 4 extra years, and God solely is aware of why he would need to, the reply for me is Izzo. Whereas I genuinely suppose the “chief of males” factor is bullcrap with regards to coaches elevating gamers, Izzo is near it, and his gamers have a tendency to like him and all the time return to this system.
- “Tom Izzo is ‘old skool’ in a great way, a approach most school children want/need. His gamers develop on the courtroom, they win and, extra importantly, they turn into a member of a household for all times. A minimum of from my perspective, that appears actual. And if it had been my son, I’d need that for him.
The takeaway
Now that the 2025 Candid Coaches sequence has concluded it is truthful to recommend that no one had a greater few weeks in it than Matt Painter and Purdue. Whereas polling coaches, we realized that they imagine the Boilermakers would be the finest staff this season and that Purdue level guard Braden Smith will likely be the perfect participant. Coaches additionally described Painter because the finest Xs and Os coach within the sport and among the many favorites to subsequent turn into a first-time nationwide champion. And now they’ve informed us that, if they’d a son heading off to play school basketball, the particular person they’d most belief to offer an amazing and priceless expertise is Painter.
Candid Coaches: Who would be the finest school basketball participant in 2025-26?
Matt Norlander
None of that is stunning.
The reality is that there are plenty of glorious coaches operating nice packages who double nearly as good dudes — however it was not stunning to see Painter lead all vote-getters when this query was requested. For lack of a greater option to put it, individuals simply actually like and revel in him. I do not imply to color him as a saint, if solely as a result of I do not personally know any saints (and that looks like a bizarre place to set the bar). However what I can inform you is that in 20-plus years of masking school basketball, I do not suppose I’ve ever heard one other coach say something derogatory about Painter. He is each broadly revered as a coach and customarily appreciated as a person. Not all people on this sport checks these containers whereas additionally being on monitor to sometime turn into a Naismith Memorial Corridor of Famer. However Painter clearly does, and the outcomes of this remaining Candid Coaches query of 2025 illustrates as a lot.