UCLA Legend John Wooden Disrespected in New Ranking

To be honest, the whole list is incorrect. Bill Self behind Tom Izzo is certainly a choice. Bob Knight behind Dean Smith is highly debatable. Not having Jerry Tarkanian or John Thompson as at least honorable mentions is pretty disrespectful to the game.

However, the most egregious error is having Coach K over Wooden. There is only one mark that Coach K has over Wooden, and that is the fact that Coach K played in an expanded tournament.

Just because Coach K had to play more teams does not take away from this very simple statistic. Wooden won 10 national championships, Coach K won five.

Coach K has 13 Final Four appearances in 42 years at Duke. Wooden has 12 in 27 years.

Even if you give Wooden the benefit of playing in a smaller tournament, that means his team had a smaller shot to qualify for said tournament, and he won twice the number of national titles with 15 fewer seasons compared to Coach K.

Also, you can't fault someone for playing by the rules they were given at that time. Wooden also had a 12-year stretch where UCLA was in the Final Four in 11 of those seasons.

Wooden never lost a championship game either. The closest margin of victory for Wooden was five points. Yep, Wooden never had a championship game come down to one possession as the clock hit zero. A testament to his coaching.

Coach K lost four title games, including a 30-point loss to UNLV, the largest margin of defeat in a title game in NCAA history.

How could Coach K be No. 1 when he has title game losses to Jim Calhoun, who's ranked fourth, Denny Crum, who's an honorable mention and Tarkanian and Nolan Richardson, who aren't even mentioned.

Just because Coach K has more tournament wins because he beat up on weaker teams does not make him No. 1. He deserves to be the second coach on this list, but to put Wooden not at one is simply incorrect and disrespectful to what he achieved.

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