Joe Lunardi may like the Horns, but his colleague at ESPN, Peter Tiernan, gives us reason to pause.
I crunched the numbers, and here are the tourney records of active coaches with seven or more decisions in games where the seeding difference is no more than two positions:
- Roy Williams, 13-5 (.722)
- Jim Boeheim, 10-4 (.714)
- Rick Pitino, 7-3 (.700)
- Steve Fisher, 6-3 (.667)
- Mike Krzyzewski, 16-9 (.640)
- Tubby Smith, Tom Davis -- both 4-3 (.571)
- Eddie Sutton, Jim Calhoun -- both 6-5 (.545)
- Gary Williams, 5-5 (.500)
- Bob Knight, 6-8 (.429), Lon Kruger, 3-4 (.429)
- Lute Olson, 7-11 (.389)
Wells may be surprised, but most of us aren't. Given two roughly equal teams, coaching makes the biggest difference. Rick Barnes clearly has some work to do.
--PB--