Heard on a podcast over the weekend some discussion about the next wave of rising coaches that are primed to be the faces of this new/next/emerging era of college basketball as guys like Rick Pitino, John Calapari, Tom Izzo, Rick Barnes, Bruce Pearl, Kelvin Sampson and even Mark Few and Bill Self are probably expected to retire over the next few years. It sounded like Mark Few is already talking about it for himself.

So then there was discussion on the next wave of coaches expected to replace them as Hall of Famer coaches and Nate Oates came up as being the face of this next era of college basketball coaching, given what he's done with Bama the last 5 years and the NBA style of play he has implemented there. Then of course Kevin Young's name came up as one who could fast join Oates right alongside him. So this BYU vs Bama game is definitely being primed as a preview of what we might to expect to see more often in coming years.

Of course with Young, he's only in his first year so it remains to be seen if he can maintain the consistency of success and build on what he's done this first year but as of now there's every reason to believe that will happen.

It all got me thinking of other coaches you have to include in the group of great coaches looking to take over the top of college basketball in coming years as those first mentioned above enter their sunset years.

Like him or hate him, you have to start off with Dan Hurley given what he's done with UCONN in recent years. I think you can also put Scott Drew here, though his program, like Kansas under Bill Self, has regressed a bit these last couple of years.

John Scheyer at Duke is showing this year he's gonna be right there in this new group too.

Some other coaches that can be named in this next crop of elite coaches rising to the top would have to guys like Matt Painter, Tommy Lloyd, Dusty May, Pat Kelsey, Todd Golden, Mark Pope, & Chris Beard. Probably worth including Grant McCasland, T.J. Otzelberger, and Richard Pitino as well.

These are probably the coaches you can expect to see leading teams to the Sweet 16 and beyond more consistently than others over the next 10+ years. Of course some will probably have to adapt and adjust their styles and philosophies to keep up. It remains to be seen how other programs do in hiring new coaches out of the NBA like Utah with Alex Jensen and Florida State with Luke Loucks. So we can probably expect a few new faces to jump up into this new era group as well.

All this to say that it's awesome to think of KY with BYU already being included in this group and even rising to the forefront alongside Bama with Oates as being a leader in influencing a new era of college basketball.