Between the NIT and the lesser, younger, dumb but also NCAA-sanctioned postseason men’s college basketball tournament, twenty coaches remain. Here’s the funniest thing about each:
Washington State: Kyle Smith
You could say the funniest thing about Kyle Smith is that he uses numbers to coach basketball (like a big nerd), but really, I think it’s how much he vaguely looks like Larry Bird.
St. Bonaventure: Mark Schmidt
Mark Schmidt also has a vaguely-looks-like thing going on with someone or some type character I can’t place, and he was part of some localized coaching carousel drama yesterday. The funniest thing about Mark Schmidt, though, is that he has so little trust in the bottom half of his roster that he only really plays six guys. Five, if he can help it. This man looks at his self-selected bench and immediately looks away, like me opening the fridge after I include a bagged salad on the grocery list.
Texas A&M: Buzz Williams
It’s hard to put the funniest thing about Buzz Williams into words, but the guy brought a seven-page document of selection committee criticisms to his first NIT press conference and it was completely on-brand. That—combined with his name being “Buzz”—embodies whatever it is going on over there.
Xavier: Jonas Hayes
This sounds a little mean, but bear with me. The funniest thing about Jonas Hayes is that he’s an interim coach. It’s not really funny with him, per se, it’s just that interim coaches are a funny situation, especially in college sports, because usually they were brought on board initially by the guy whose firing has now made an interim coach necessary. What happens when a college coach gets fired before the offseason is that the administration then immediately calls one of his closest confidants and says, “Alright, your turn ‘til the new guy cleans house in the offseason.” There’s no better way to do it, but it’s a silly system. This man is about to lose his job, and he knows that, and it isn’t even really his fault. He’s not the guy they were trying to fire!
Bonus humor points for this interim coach getting his team to start playing well again and reach the NIT Final Four.
Gonzaga: Mark Few
The funniest thing about Mark Few is that he and Gonzaga both exist. Gonzaga, as a premise, is ridiculous. An elite basketball program at a small-ish private school in Spokane? That plot is not believable. Also, where the hell did Mark Few come from? Was he just living in the pipes at Gonzaga when they needed an assistant?
Arkansas: Eric Musselman
Ooh, this one is tough. Most things about Eric Musselman are funny. We’ll go with the big one: He is a noisy man. In a fun way.
Texas Tech: Mark Adams
Mark Adams shares a haircut with 45% of altos in the choir of your average mainline Protestant church.
Duke: Mike Krzyzewski
The funniest thing about Mike Krzyzewski is that he runs his own little basketball mafia. He’s just as big a cheater as everyone else in the sport, but Duke fans will never admit that, and he’s so obsessed with external approval that he announced his retirement a year early in the hopes everyone would throw him a retirement tour, something only ESPN really did in the end. On the one hand, we’re lucky Coach K wasn’t around in the days before coaching was a thing, but on the other, think of how many fewer French soldiers would have died in Russia had Napoleon been born in a middle-American town in the 50’s.
North Carolina: Hubert Davis
The funniest thing about Hubert Davis is how obliviously happy he seems to be. Go do a Google Image search of his name and see how many smiles you can count. More than half! He’s a smiley guy, that Hubert.
UCLA: Mick Cronin
The funniest thing about Mick Cronin is that he is a little Irish man from Ohio who I’m pretty sure had never been to a concert before he moved to California, and he is now the face of a basketball brand built on being smooth, cool, and near the ocean.
Purdue: Matt Painter
You know how they say spouses start to look like each other after a while? Well, Matt Painter’s been working with Purdue Pete for a long time.
Saint Peter’s: Shaheen Holloway
The funniest thing about Shaheen Holloway is that he coaches a team named the Peacocks. That’s not a real team, right?? And yet it is. MAAC nicknames are the best.
Arizona: Tommy Lloyd
The funniest thing about Tommy Lloyd is that he basically got this job because he liked traveling through Europe. The story goes that Mark Few, who was Lloyd’s boss back at Gonzaga, wanted Lloyd to find a niche, and Lloyd decided to try international recruiting as that niche. Now, he’s not only the head coach at Arizona but he’s also doing well as the head coach at Arizona with a rotation in which 75% of players have hometowns outside the U.S. This guy basic-betched his way to being one of the most successful college coaches in the game. Think of how worse off the Wildcats would be had Instagram been around ten years earlier.
Houston: Kelvin Sampson
The funniest thing about Kelvin Sampson is that he was banned from college basketball for years because he sent text messages to recruits and made a few phone calls. UNC had fake classes to help keep athletes eligible, got in no trouble for it, and Kelvin Sampson got banned by the NCAA for half a decade because he was recruiting too hard.
Michigan: Juwan Howard
The funniest thing about Juwan Howard is that he struck a man in the head this year in a handshake line.
Villanova: Jay Wright
The funniest thing about Jay Wright is that he is far too handsome to be a college basketball coach. Go do ads for cologne. Go coach in the NBA. Go sit at fancy restaurants in New York and look like you’re talking about something quite serious. You don’t belong here, Jay. Leave this to people who look like the next guy on our list.
Kansas: Bill Self
The funniest thing about Bill Self is not the swaggerful reaction to the Adidas allegations, or that his response to the NCAA about the allegations was to basically say that he’d outlive them, or even his potbelly. The funniest thing about Bill Self is that he allowed Kansas to make this video.
Providence: Ed Cooley
Sorry, Ed. Still the ripped pants.
Iowa State: T.J. Otzelberger
The biceps on this guy are funny, and so are the pectorals, but the funniest thing about T.J. Otzelberger is that UNLV hired him, got all excited, he achieved pure mediocrity there, and then he jumped to a Big 12 school and immediately had stunning success. UNLV has to be so confused by this man.
Miami: Jim Larrañaga
The funniest thing about Jim Larrañaga is that despite coaching at one of the most instable athletic departments in Division I sports, and despite having pretty limited success in his role, he has managed to remain the head coach at Miami for more than a decade through sheer force of vibes.
