Candid Coaches: Which college basketball coach will be next to win their first NCAA Tournament title?

Once again CBS Sports has been publishing our Candid Coaches series, which spotlights relevant topics and issues in men’s college basketball. Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander polled nearly 100 coaches in recent weeks on a variety of subjects. Coaches spoke on background and were provided anonymity to offer unfiltered opinions. Today, we turn to the topic of the best coaches yet to win a national championship.

Winning the NCAA Tournament is a career-defining achievement, something so difficult that some of the greatest coaches in the sport, men who led programs for over 30 years and coached close to or more than 1,000 games failed to achieve.

If you’re curious on some of the greatest to never win it all, here’s the list of men’s Division I coaches with 700-plus wins but zero NCAA Tournament titles: Bob Huggins, Rick Barnes, Eddie Sutton, Kelvin Sampson, Lefty Driesell, Dana Altman, Lou Henson, Ed Diddle, John Beilein, Mark Few, Ray Meyer and Norm Stewart. (Bruce Pearl won a Division II title in 1995, so that counts.)

Winning even one NCAA crown alters a coach’s legacy, some so much that it’s the event that can bolster them to eventual Naismith Hall of Fame status.

There are just seven active men’s D-I coaches who can claim an NCAA tourney title on their résumé: John Calipari, Scott Drew, Todd Golden, Dan Hurley, Tom Izzo, Rick Pitino and Bill Self. That leaves a lot of opportunity for others to join that club. Florida’s Todd Golden, who just turned 40 this summer, is the newest first-time champion. And before him, Dan Hurley altered his reputation forever: He went from zero NCAA Tournament wins at UConn to back-to-back national titles and clinched an eventual Hall of Fame ceremony for himself years from now.

So, who’s next? That’s today’s survey Q.