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Jim Calhoun leads Connecticut to its (and his)
second tournament championship, moving Calhoun over .700 to .712 -
good enough to jump three spots to fifth place on the list. Calhoun
and Connecticut also won the championship in 1999.
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Mike Krzyzewski takes Duke to the Final Four
for the tenth time (Duke has gone 14 times) allowing Krzyzewski to take
back the top spot on the list from
Tom Izzo whose Michigan State team suffers a
first round loss this year.
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Eddie Sutton makes the Final Four for the second
time with Oklahoma State (also in 1995) and for the third time overall
(1978 with Arkansas). Sutton has taken four teams to the tournament -
Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma State, a feat matched by
only two other coaches - Lefty Driesell (Davidson, Maryland, James Madison,
Georgia State) and Jim Harrick (Pepperdine, UCLA, Rhode Island, Georgia).
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Phil Martelli debuts on the list at .600
after leading St. Joseph's to the Elite Eight, St. Joe's best showing
since 1981 when it also fell one short of the Final Four.
St. Joseph's was undefeated going into the Atlantic 10
conference tournament and was briefly ranked No. 1 in the country after
the other undefeated team, Stanford, suffered it's first loss in their
last regular season game.
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After five years of low seeding and over achieving by beating
higher seeds (with the exception of 2002 when they were seeded
6 and lost in the first round),
Gonzaga is picked as a second seed, but only manages one win.
Mark Few, Gonzaga's coach for all but the
first year of this run, debuts on the list at .545 with a 6-5
record.
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Xavier, a team that has made it past the second round only once in 15 tries (1990: 2-1),
falls one win short of reaching the Final Four this year, enabling
Thad Matta to debut on the list at .600 with a
6-4 record. Xavier had knocked off the then undefeated and No. 1 ranked
St. Joseph's in the Atlantic 10 tournament quarterfinals on the way to winning
that tournament, in what may have been it's only chance to get invited to
the NCAA tournament. At the end of January, Xavier possessed a
10-9 overall record and only a 2-5 league record.
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The search to replace Matt Doherty as North Carolina's coach
leads to the great coaching shuffle of 2003. On this list,
Roy Williams
moves from Kansas to North Carolina and
Bill Self
moves from Illinois to Kansas. Self makes it to the
Elite 8 in his first year at Kansas, while Williams only manages a win
and a loss at North Carolina.
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Returning to the active coaching ranks this year are
former Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett
(taking over at Washington State),
former Stanford and Iowa coach Tom Davis
(taking over at Drake) and
former Lamar, Oklahoma and TCU coach Billy Tubbs
(returning to coach Lamar).
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