Watching ESPN during this month you can’t keep from hearing about March Madness, and really who would want to? But the one thing I hate about college basketball, and especially the tournament, is how crappy some of the coaches really are. 

If you’re a casual fan you might think, “Well that team went 35-3, their coach must be good.”

Wrong.  Wrong wrong wrong WRONG. 

This was never more evident then watching Kentucky, my National Championship pick, get ousted by a West Virginia team missing its starting point guard and running the same high screen play every freaking time. 

But we’ll get to me ultra-bashing the great John Calipari in a few minutes, or possibly longer depending on your reading level. 

So in order to stick with the March Madness theme I’m going to talk about the four most overrated college coaches, which will be like the regions in the NCAA tournament ,and then I’ll tell you what coach would be the number one seed in that region. 

So without further ado, let’s get to it.

The Big Recruiter, Small Coaching Region

This is a coach who always has coached the top picks in the NBA draft.  He also only coaches them for one season and usually just relies on his NBA caliber player to do whatever without coaching at all. 

This coach almost never wins a National Championship. 

This coach’s school may or may not get hit with penalties due to recruiting violations. 

I gave strong consideration to giving the No. 1 seed to Thad Matta for his give the ball to the star and clear out offense he ran with Greg Oden in 2006-07 and again this year with Evan Turner. 

But no the No. 1 seed in this region goes to the one, the only, Coach Calipari.  Derrick Rose, Tyreke Evans, DeMarcus Cousins and John Wall, all were recruited within a span of three years by Coach Cal. 

How many National Championships did they win in those three years? 

That would be zero. 

Instead of coaching those stars, he just lets them do their own thing.  

They run the give and go offense, give me the ball and go to hell.

The Stubborn, “I’m making no adjustments during this game no matter what” Region

The name is pretty much self explanatory for this region. 

This is the type of coach who thinks his gameplan is the only way to play, even when his team is getting blitzed or has trouble with one area of their play. 

There are many examples of this kind of coach this year. 

I was all set to name this region the Bill Self region after he refused to exploit Northern Iowa’s lack of athleticism and ballhandling in Kansas’ second round lost to them. 

At the end of the game when they were fighting for their life and they pressed NIU and forced three straight turnovers only then did Self think, “Hmm you know what? We are 50 times more athletic than this team full of all white farm kids. 

Maybe we should use that.” Or it could have been the Jim Boeheim region after refusing to let his best player, Wesley Johnson, bring the ball up in Syracuse’s loss to Butler in the Sweet Sixteen. 

Instead, he continued to have his backup shooting guard dribble around like he didn’t have any hands, just arm nubs ,and then do a move my fifth grade cousin would do. 

No, I take that back. I coach my fifth grade cousin, so even he wouldn’t do the same stupid move. 

But I’m going to bend the rules here (hey, it’s my column, so I can do what I want) and the No. 1 seed in this region is Coach Calipari again!

I warned you it was going to be an ultra bashing of him. 

But watching Kentucky just crap the bed like it did against West Virginia was the last straw. 

First of all, Kentucky refused to pressure the ball at all, instead dropping back into a 2-3 zone and allowing WV to do whatever they wanted. 

Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, in the second half, WV scored three straight times on the same high screen and cut to the basket.  Three straight times!  

And they continued to score off that play throughout the rest of the game. 

Now if you’re a college coach and you can’t stop a simple play from scoring on your crew of All-Americans, then maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t be a college coach. 

The Big Name Coach, Who Gets Credit on Name Alone Region

This is another self-explanatory region.  Tom Izzo got some strong consideration here.  Don’t get me wrong I think Izzo is a very good coach, but he started getting credit for things like Korie Lucious hitting the game winning shot against Maryland. 

I mean Izzo’s good but tell me how his coaching allowed Lucious to hit an off balance three. 

Mike Krzyzewski is another coach that gets an inordinate amount of credit for his players’ success. 

Yes they are good at preparing, and getting the most out of their players, but last time I checked the coaches weren’t out there making the shots so stop giving them credit for it. 

Well since this is turning into an “I hate John Calipari because he ruined my March Madness prediction” column I figured I’d keep it up and make him the No. 1 seed for this region too. 

Because lets face it, Calipari has had enormous talent on his teams because of his recruiting *cough cough* illegal violations that got his last two schools penalties from the NCAA *cough cough* sorry, allergies. 

But just because he has the McDonald’s All-American team playing for him doesn’t mean he knows how to coach. 

Sure give him credit for “recruiting” but not for coaching, and definitely not for John Wall hitting crazy off balance runners.

The Over-coacher

This is the coach that vigorously draws up plays every two minutes. 

He’s the one yelling at his players every minute of the game. 

Basically he’s like Bob Knight, Bob Huggins and the coach from Varsity Blues rolled into one, plus hopped up on speed. 

Besides Huggins who would probably be the No. 2 seed in this region, the No. 1 seed gets bonus points for losing early, and that’s Coach Cal!

No, I’m just kidding, even though I really wanted it to be, the No. 1 

seed has to be Kansas State’s Frank Martin. 

He just looks crazy, like any moment he’s going to jump into the stands and go Ron Artest on the crowd, or he’s going to the Undertaker’s chokeslam on the ref after a bad call. 

You wonder how his players can continue to play at such a high level with so much going on and so many things to remember when on the court; the answer obviously was that they were not able to. 

Sometimes you just need to let the players play their game and just keep it simple, and that’s what Martin and all the other over-coaches don’t realize or refuse to realize.

So there you go, 1,000 words about overrated college coaches, which is probably 800 more than you wanted to hear. 

I really could have cut it down but really I just wanted to vent about Calipari ruining my bracket and just sucking in general. 

If he was here right now I would give him the Father Pat treatment from Will Ferrell’s movie Semi-Pro, S my C, I’ll burn your house down! 

Contact Curtis Uemura at [email protected]