2016 March Madness: Examining the Sweet 16 Coaches
The Sweet 16 tips off tomorrow night and we wanted to determine which schools have the greatest coaching advantage. Several high profile coaches survived the first round of the NCAA Tournament, but bettors may be surprised to see which coaches have been the most profitable for spread bettors.
Using our Bet Labs software we found that Notre Dame’s Mike Brey (160-161 ATS) was the only active head coach with a losing ATS record, although it’s also been a losing proposition to bet on Billy Kennedy, Jim Boeheim and Mike Krzyzewski after accounting for the juice charged by sportsbooks.
The table below displays the ATS record for all sixteen active coaches since the start of the 2004-05 season.
| Coach | School | Record (ATS) | Units Won | ROI |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Self | Kansas | 207-168 | 27.95 | 7.5% |
| Jim Larranaga | Miami | 179-146 | 25.12 | 7.7% |
| Dana Altman | Oregon | 188-157 | 21.02 | 6.1% |
| Roy Williams | North Carolina | 203-173 | 19.49 | 5.2% |
| Tony Bennett | Virginia | 164-139 | 16.63 | 5.5% |
| Jay Wright | Villanova | 181-161 | 9.85 | 2.9% |
| Mark Turgeon | Maryland | 166-147 | 9.48 | 3.0% |
| Steve Prohm | Iowa State | 79-65 | 9.12 | 6.30% |
| Greg Gard | Wisconsin | 14-8 | 5.19 | 23.6% |
| Lon Kruger | Oklahoma | 174-161 | 4.92 | 1.5% |
| Mark Few | Gonzaga | 179-166 | 3.78 | 1.1% |
| Tom Crean | Indiana | 169-158 | 1.37 | 0.4% |
| Mike Krzyzewski | Duke | 194-185 | -1.04 | -0.3% |
| Billy Kennedy | Texas A&M | 139-138 | -6.27 | -2.3% |
| Jim Boeheim | Syracuse | 178-176 | -7.14 | -2.0% |
| Mike Brey | Notre Dame | 160-161 | -9.82 | -3.1% |
It’s interesting to see that Kansas head coach Bill Self (207-168 ATS) is the most active profitable coach in our database. Self has actually been the third most profitable coach overall, trailing only Akron’s Keith Dambrot (180-143 ATS) and UCLA’s Steve Alford (199-155 ATS).
We should also point out that Jim Larranga has had tremendous success with two different schools: Miami (84-69 ATS) and George Mason (95-77 ATS). Even so, Larranga has been significantly more successful during the regular season (156-122 ATS) as opposed to the postseason (23-24 ATS).
Furthermore, the Sweet 16 actually features three of the worst postseason coaches in our database: Jay Wright (17-27 ATS), Mike Krzyzewski (24-33 ATS) and Lon Kruger (13-22 ATS). It’s fairly interesting to see that Coach K has actually done fairly well during the NCAA Tournament (16-15 ATS), but has struggled tremendously during conference tournament play. Conversely, Kruger (9-14 ATS) and Wright (9-14 ATS) are two of the six worst NCAA tournament coaches in our database.
Bettors should also be sure to visit our free college basketball odds page for the latest lines, injuries, public betting trends and more.
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David Solar is the Content Manager for Sports Insights and can be reached directly at David@SportsInsights.com
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