Apparently, you can teach an old coach new tricks.
The NCAA tournament’s Sweet 16 is set and features more than a quarter of its coaches eligible for Social Security, with five being age 67 or older.
College basketball has seen an exodus of some of its best coaches in recent years as Mike Krzyzewski, Roy Williams, Jay Wright, Tony Bennett, Jim Boeheim, and Jim Larrañaga have all retired in recent years, with many citing the changing landscape of NIL and the transfer portal as the reason why.
“The opportunity to make money somewhere else created a situation that you had to ask yourself as a coach: What is this about?” Larrañaga said at his retirement press conference in December 2024. “I just didn’t feel like I could successfully navigate this whole new world that I was dealing with because my conversations were ridiculous.”
But the ones from that pre-NIL (name, image, and likeness) generation who stayed have seemed to have figured out how to make it work.
Rick Pitino (73 years old), Tom Izzo (71), Rick Barnes (71), Kelvin Sampson (70), and John Calipari (67) are still winning in a game that looks drastically different in the decades since they first entered it. Yet, as March Madness hits full swing, their teams will all play this weekend for a chance to advance to the Elite Eight and beyond.
Guarding the Game
After Michigan State defeated St. Louis to reach the Sweet 16 on Sunday, Izzo acknowledged his peers who chose retirement over the game’s current headaches. He also touched on the possible disservice they did to their players by hanging up their whistles for their golf clubs.
“I respect the guys that left,” Izzo told reporters. “I understand why some of them did. I appreciate what my boss told me a long time ago: Your job is to be a steward of the game. I don’t think right now enough coaches are standing up to be stewards of the game, and a steward of the game means to try to do what’s best for a player. We’ll see as time goes.”
Throughout the season, Izzo has been a vocal critic of college basketball and its rules, or lack thereof, speaking out against practices that he thought were detrimental to players. After Louisville signed London Johnson out of the G League in November, Izzo called it “ridiculous” and “embarrassing.”
“I love my job, (but) I don’t respect my profession,” Izzo said then. “I think we’re really hurting the seniors in high school, giving them a chance. What’s the age limit now? Is it 30? If you have three beards and two mustaches, are you illegal, are you not allowed to play?”
On Sunday, a reporter commented to Izzo that his teams seem to have stayed consistent in style and talent regardless of his roster over the years. “You just prolonged my retirement for two years because that’s the ultimate compliment,” Izzo said.
While Izzo has kept Michigan State a tournament regular, his peers have adapted and benefited from college basketball’s current landscape.
The Portal Savant
Pitino has always been among college basketball’s elite tacticians and recruiters. The Red Storm are led by Zuby Ejiofor and Bryce Hopkins, two transfers who started their careers at Kansas and Kentucky, respectively. But Pitino also managed to coach St. John’s to its first Sweet 16 since the Clinton administration with a player he probably would have passed on coming out of high school. Dylan Darling, whose game-winning layup lifted St. John’s over Kansas on Sunday, transferred from Idaho State.
“First thing you have to do when you’re evaluating is understand they all lie about their height,” Pitino told reporters. “So I thought I was getting a 6-(foot)-2 guard until I met him. Found out he was the same size as me.”
Pitino is 6 feet tall.
Facing the Past
Calipari had his own reckoning with college basketball’s wild times Saturday. To get Arkansas into the Sweet 16, he had to beat High Point, which was led by Cam’Ron Fletcher, whom Calipari recruited to Kentucky six years ago. Instead of pointing to his former player as a sign of the times, Calipari took the high road after Fletcher scored 25 points against his former coach in the loss.
“Today to see him do what he did, I was proud of him,” Calipari said after the game. “Just wanted to beat him, but I was proud of him. He put his shoulder down and just did what he wanted to do. And he made a bunch of threes. So no, I’m happy that it’s turned out this way for him for High Point.”
