Out-Coached ranks college basketball coaches based on how much they outperform — or underperform — expectations given their roster and schedule.
Rankings
Active Coaches
Recency-weighted performance
The Active Coaches ranking evaluates coaches on a rolling five-season window, with the most recent season carrying the most weight. This means a great year matters more than a great decade ago, and recent struggles can't be hidden behind a long résumé.
Each season is scored using three efficiency-based metrics — WAB, WAP, and TASE (defined below) — then weighted and summed across the window. Only coaches currently active at a Division I program are included.
Rankings
All-Time Coaches
Career résumé
The All-Time ranking evaluates a coach's full body of work using a different set of metrics than the Active tab. Instead, it focuses on career win percentage, NCAA tournament success, and depth of March runs. Retired coaches are included alongside active ones, and a longevity factor gives a slight boost to coaches with longer careers — sustained excellence over time is part of the story.
Active Coaches Metrics
What goes into the Active score
These three metrics are specific to the Active Coaches ranking. The All-Time tab uses career win rate and tournament résumé data instead.
WAB
Wins Above Bubble — how many more wins a team earned than a hypothetical bubble-level team would have with the same schedule. Computed from regular-season and conference tournament game logs using a Simple Rating System (SRS), where the bubble is defined as the 68th-ranked D1 team by SRS each season.
WAP
Wins Above Projection — actual wins minus Vegas closing-spread expected wins. Each game's expected win probability is derived from the closing spread; WAP is the sum of (actual outcome − expected probability) across all games in the regular season and conference tournament.
TASE
Tournament Against Seed Expectation — how far a team went in the NCAA Tournament relative to historical seed expectations, computed independently from 40 years of tournament data.
Supplementary stats
ATS Margin
Against The Spread margin — average points by which a team beat or missed the Vegas closing line per game. Positive means the team consistently outperformed what oddsmakers expected; negative means it fell short. ATS margin is displayed as a supplementary stat on coach pages and the active rankings table, but is not included in the Coach Score formula.
Game log and tournament data sourced from
Kaggle. In-season game results sourced from
KenPom. Spread data sourced from major US sportsbooks.
If you notice any errors in the data or rankings, please reach out — we want to get it right.
[email protected]
