What have you done for me lately? That is definitely the feeling one gets when reading a recent ranking of Big 12 coaches. Kansas basketball coach and Hall of Famer Bill Self was slotted second in the ranking of conference coaches by James Fletcher III for On3.
Recency bias is a real thing, and sometimes it overwhelms truth and logic. Things that have happened over the last two or three years shouldn’t erase an incredible lifetime of achievements.
Two years of relative struggles should not and cannot blot out all that was accomplished before.
Where was Kansas basketball coach Bill Self ranked, and who was in front of him?
Bill Self has two national championships, one as recently as 2022. Including seasons at Tulsa and Illinois, his teams have made the NCAA Tournament 27 straight seasons. Until last season, Kansas, under Self’s leadership, had never been seeded as lower than a four-seed.
In his career, he has won 21 regular-season conference championships, including a record-setting 14 Big 12 titles while at KU.
He is in the Hall of Fame, and is the third-winningest active college coach, and 13th overall. Bill Self is one of the most successful coaches the college game has ever seen.
Yet, On3 ranked him second.
Kelvin Sampson is ranked first. Sampson is a fine coach, and what he has done with Houston is incredible. He is an accomplished coach by all standards, but his resume isn’t even close to Self’s.
He won two Frontier conference titles with Montana Tech early in his career, but didn’t win another conference championship until 20 years later, when his Oklahoma Sooners tied…Self and Kansas. When Sampson coached in the Big 8/Big 12 previously, that was his only regular-season title, though his teams were competitive, finishing in the top three nine times.
In 2014, Sampson took over the Houston program and has built it into one of the best in the country. Since 2018, he’s won six conference championships, including the first two in which Houston has been part of the Big 12. Houston has been to two Final Fours in the last five seasons.
Sampson doesn’t have any championships and has 107 fewer Division One wins than Self. Despite this, Kelvin Sampson is a fine coach who has enjoyed incredible success throughout his career, and he will eventually join Bill Self in the Hall of Fame, but he isn’t in yet.
It seems as if Self is penalized for two consecutive down years. Still, he won 44 games during that recent span. He hasn’t won fewer than 21 since winning 19 in 1997-98. In his 32-year career, he’s won fewer than 21 games only four times.
There can be no doubt that Self has struggled a bit during the transfer portal era, and Sampson has excelled. Still, Sampson, as great a coach as he is, doesn’t have a resume that compares to Self’s.
An argument could be made that Sampson might be the third-best coach in the Big 12. Baylor’s Scott Drew could be ranked second, just below Self and just ahead of Sampson. Drew executed one of the most incredible program resurrections in the history of the game when he took over a Baylor program that was near death and eventually turned it into a national championship program.
To an extent, this is quibbling. Each of these three coaches is successful and has their strengths and weaknesses. Remove recency bias, however, and Bill Self clearly stands head and shoulders above the rest. There should be no doubt. Many programs would love to have Self’s “down” years. Hopefully, Kansas will bounce back this season and put these arguments to rest once and for all.