Despite having one of his best seasons in the last five years, Tom Izzo is not considered a top 10 coach nationally by one popular college basketball social media account.
College Basketball Report — a popular social media account known for putting together rankings and other lists — has released their list of top 50 coaches heading into the 2025-26 season. Izzo was obviously pretty high on the list, but not as high as some may have had the hall of famer.
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College Basketball Report has Izzo as the No. 12 coach nationally entering the season. Here’s a list of the coaches ahead of him in the rankings:
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Dan Hurley of UConn (No. 1)
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Kelvin Sampson of Houston (No. 2)
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Mark Few of Gonzaga (No. 3)
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Rick Pitino of St. John’s (No. 4)
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Matt Painter of Purdue (No. 5)
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Bill Self of Kansas (No. 6)
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Nate Oats of Alabama (No. 7)
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Bruce Pearl of Auburn (No. 8)
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Jon Scheyer of Duke (No. 9)
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Todd Golden of Florida (No. 10)
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Scott Drew of Baylor (No. 11)
The list itself isn’t bad — in my opinion — when you start to look at who all is ahead of Izzo in the rankings. The one thing I would nitpick on is having Scott Drew ahead of Izzo. Sure, Drew won a national championship in 2021, but other than that season, he hasn’t led the Bears to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament since 2017. So if we are playing a comparison game, I find it hard to have Drew ahead of Izzo based on both recent success and overall success.
Check out the complete rankings from College Basketball Report below:
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This article originally appeared on Spartans Wire: Is Tom Izzo a top 10 coach? One recent release rankings says otherwise
