Once again CBS Sports presents our annual Candid Coaches series, which spotlights relevant topics and issues in men’s college basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled roughly 100 coaches in recent weeks on a variety of subjects. Coaches spoke on background and were provided anonymity to offer unfiltered opinions. This is the second installment in our 2025 survey.
Media outlets often publish a list of the best coaches in college basketball that’s shaped largely by publicly available information like wins and championships. Those are always subjective but also pretty easy to do with more or less the same names slotted near the top each time.
But who are the good guys?
Not just good coaches but also good men, you know, the type of people you wouldn’t mind your son playing for someday, and spending four years with someday, if he developed into a legitimate basketball prospect. A random person probably has no grasp for how to answer that question without real relationships throughout the sport. But do you know who has real relationships throughout the sport?
Coaches!
So, with that in mind, Matt Norlander and I asked more than 100 college coaches the following question:
If your son were a player, which college coach would you want him to spend four years with?
(NOTE: A list of more than a dozen coaches accounted for the other 21% of the vote.)
Quotes that stood out
On Matt Painter:
“He’s like a brother to me. [He’s] one of the most genuine, well-spoken, compassionate, empathetic [people]. Elite thinker [and] elite coach who has produced with less and … his player-development, and how he gets these kids to stay, is amazing to me. He’s a really, really good human being.””Excellent coach. Better person. Man of integrity. Tells his players what they need to hear, not what they want to hear. Genuinely cares about his program and the game of college basketball. Players have a great understanding of their job.””His program is at the highest level and has shown that they are doing the right things to retain players. So they are having a great experience, will develop and get better, and will always hear the truth.”
On Tom Izzo:
“Izzo embraces old school and new school. He teaches the game the right way — and I think he has the ultimate respect of his players. You get coach Izzo for life if you play for him.””If he wants to coach four more years, and God only knows why he would want to, the answer for me is Izzo. While I genuinely think the “leader of men” thing is bullcrap when it comes to coaches raising players, Izzo is close to it, and his players tend to love him and always return to the program.”Tom Izzo is ‘old school’ in a good way, a way most college kids need/want. His players develop on the court, they win and, more importantly, they become a member of a family for life. At least from my perspective, that seems real. And if it were my son, I would want that for him.
The takeaway
Now that the 2025 Candid Coaches series has concluded it’s fair to suggest that nobody had a better few weeks in it than Matt Painter and Purdue. While polling coaches, we learned that they believe the Boilermakers will be the best team this season and that Purdue point guard Braden Smith will be the best player. Coaches also described Painter as the best Xs and Os coach in the sport and among the favorites to next become a first-time national champion. And now they’ve told us that, if they had a son heading off to play college basketball, the person they’d most trust to provide a great and valuable experience is Painter.
Candid Coaches: Who will be the best college basketball player in 2025-26?
Matt Norlander
None of this is surprising.
The truth is that there are a lot of excellent coaches running great programs who double as good dudes — but it was not surprising to see Painter lead all vote-getters when this question was asked. For lack of a better way to put it, people just really like and enjoy him. I don’t mean to paint him as a saint, if only because I don’t personally know any saints (and that seems like a weird place to set the bar). But what I can tell you is that in 20-plus years of covering college basketball, I don’t think I’ve ever heard another coach say anything derogatory about Painter. He’s both broadly respected as a coach and generally liked as a man. Not everybody in this sport checks those boxes while also being on track to someday become a Naismith Memorial Hall of Famer. But Painter clearly does, and the results of this final Candid Coaches question of 2025 illustrates as much.
