Bill Self: Total conference domination
Last March, when Kansas lost in the Elite Eight and it was again being said that Self somehow forgets how to coach a basketball team whenever he reaches a regional final, I dug into the coach's track record in the NCAA tournament. It turns out that such defeats on the threshold of the Final Four have drawn at least some of their prominence from the fact that Self has reached the Elite Eight more often than would be predicted based on his seeds alone.
That may be of little solace to traumatized Kansas fans, but it does refocus the discussion on what is truly the outstanding characteristic of the coach in question. Winning 13 conference titles in a row -- and doing so in the one-and-done era in a league that of late has tended to rank No. 1 in Division I for statistical strength -- is absolutely insane. Self will win a second national title before long, and all of this Elite Eight superstition will be buried like so much alluvial sediment after a prehistoric flood.
