Big Ten basketball coaches

As the college basketball regular season approaches, I was looking ahead at the Badgers schedule and noticed something: the Big Ten has some great basketball coaches this year.

The Big Ten has gotten used to the likes of Tom Izzo (MSU), Thad Matta (OSU), Bo Ryan (Wisconsin), and Bruce Weber (Illinois). These are four great coaches, with a lot of respect around the league. In fact, all of these coaches have taken their teams to the Final Four at least once. With the addition of Kelvin Sampson (Indiana) last year and Tubby Smith (Minnesota), Todd Lickliter (Iowa), and John Beilein (Michigan) this year, this is a very impressive group of coaches and possibly one of the better groups of coaches ever assembled for a single year in the Big Ten. Kelvin Sampson was named Coach of the Year in 1995 with Oklahoma, Tubby Smith took Kentucky to the national championship in 1998, and Todd Lickliter and John Beilein both took programs with very little respect and turned them around (Butler and West Virginia, respectively). Should be a fun year for the Big Ten.

Some good articles on the new coaches:

Tubby Smith
Todd Lickliter
John Beilein

My apologies to Penn State, Northwestern, and Purdue, but who are we kidding?

UPDATE: Bo Ryan did not take the Badgers to the Final Four. Dick Bennett was still the coach in 2000. My bad.