The average age of a Division I men's basketball head coach in 2023 is 50. Then there are the outliers.
Scanning the entirety of Division I, we find: 50 coaches who are currently 60 years of age or older (think John Calipari, Bill Self, Mark Few and Brian Dutcher); 20 who clock in at 65 or above (e.g., Tom Izzo, Rick Barnes, Kelvin Sampson and Dana Altman); and, finally, a select group of six elder statesmen who have seen their 70th birthdays come and go.
It's possible these six coaches stand out not only in relation to their peers but also compared to their predecessors. Comprehensive data from the past is incomplete, but if NCAA tournament champion head coaches from 1939 to 2023 are any guide, the profession as a whole might be as old as it has ever been.
Meet the seasoned six, counting down from youngest to, shall we say, most experienced:
6. Rick Pitino, St. John's Red Storm
Age: 71; Career wins: 713
Whether as an interim head coach at age 23 (Hawai'i in 1976), NBA assistant at 29 (New York Knicks) or Final Four coach at 34 (Providence in 1987), Pitino was a young man in a hurry back in the day.
Two more stints in the NBA followed, and in between there was a national title at Kentucky in 1996. Pitino returned to the college game in 2001 when he was selected to restore the Louisville program to its former glory.
The Cardinals' 2013 national championship was later vacated because of recruiting violations. A brief coaching sojourn in Greece and three seasons at Iona have now brought Pitino back to the major-conference scene as the head coach at St. John's.
The Red Storm are tipping off the Pitino era with a revamped roster, one that's 3-2 on the young season and projects to be near yet quite possibly still under .500 in this year's Big East.
Same mentality every game. pic.twitter.com/yibx08tt5f
— Canes Men's Basketball (@CanesHoops) November 17, 2023
5. Jim Larrañaga, Miami Hurricanes
Age: 74; Career wins: 730
Larrañaga's career arc suggests that persistence really does pay. Over his first 19 Division I seasons, Larranaga was 0-2 in NCAA tournament action and had won a solid 56% of his games at Bowling Green and George Mason.
Then the Patriots defeated top seed UConn in the 2006 Elite Eight. Miami hired Larranaga in 2011, and the Hurricanes have since reached four Sweet 16s, the past two Elite Eights and the 2023 Final Four.
Larrañaga's current Miami team is ranked in the top 10 and at 5-0 has recorded neutral-floor wins over Georgia and Kansas State. No, Norchad Omier, Nijel Pack, Wooga Poplar and company haven't completely won over previously skeptical laptops. Yes, an upcoming road game at Kentucky will give the Canes an excellent opportunity to make that case.
4. Fran Dunphy, La Salle Explorers
Age: 75; Career wins: 599
Dunphy coached 17 seasons at Penn and 13 at Temple before stepping down as planned after the 2018-19 season. Two years later, La Salle lured him out of retirement, and now Dunphy is starting his second season with the Explorers.
Teams coached by Dunphy are 3-17 in the NCAA tournament. Then again, few coaches have reached such a high number of tournament games while carrying such a low career average seed (10.6).
3. Leonard Hamilton, Florida State Seminoles
Age: 75; Career wins: 630
Hamilton coached the Washington Wizards from 2000 to 2002 but has otherwise maintained continuous employment as a Division I head coach since the mid-1980s at Oklahoma State, Miami and Florida State.
Prior to Hamilton's arrival in 2002, the FSU men's basketball program had won a total of 12 NCAA tournament games in 46 years. Since then, the Seminoles have posted 11 tournament wins in 20 full postseasons.
Few coaches were more ill-served by the cancellation of the 2020 NCAA tournament. At 26-5, that year's FSU team won the ACC outright and ranks as one of the strongest of Hamilton's long career.
2. Dan D'Antoni, Marshall Thundering Herd
Age: 76; Career wins: 164
D'Antoni didn't make his collegiate head-coaching debut until age 67, when he returned to his alma mater to take the helm at Marshall. By then, the coach had logged 30 years at the high school level (all with the same team) and nine as an NBA assistant.
In 2018, Marshall won its first NCAA tournament game in program history when the Thundering Herd upset No. 4 seed Wichita State in the round of 64. Marshall's breakthrough occurred some 15 months after its coach had enlivened a postgame news conference and earned fame on social media by saying, "I haven't finished my damn analytics story yet."
1. Cliff Ellis, Coastal Carolina Chanticleers
Age: 77; Career wins: 829
Coach Ellis turns 78 next month. Among active Division I men's head coaches, he is the leader in official career wins by a decent margin -- about 35 victories ahead of the likes of John Calipari and Bill Self. Those victories were compiled by Ellis at South Alabama, Clemson, Auburn and, since 2007, Coastal Carolina.
Ellis succeeded Mike Krzyzewski as ACC coach of the year in 1987, and the following season relinquished the award to Dean Smith. The last time he took a team that was not a 16-seed to the NCAA tournament was 2003, when Auburn reached the Sweet 16.
Quite apart from age, Ellis has a claim to fame few can equal. He has gone to the NCAA tournament both as a 16-seed (Coastal Carolina in 2014 and 2015) and as a 1-seed (Auburn in 1999). While Gregg Marshall has done the same (with Winthrop as a No. 16 three times and Wichita State as a No. 1 in 2014), it's an exclusive club.