Sweet 16 coaches, ranked by who’s facing the most pressure in 2025 men’s March Madness

Jon Scheyer will be feeling the heat this weekend, but not quite as much as one of his counterparts.

The NCAA tournament’s second weekend brings a heightened level of pressure for every coach and every player fortunate enough to participate in it. For some, though, the stakes are just a little bit higher than everyone else.

Let’s rank the level of pressure on the 16 head coaches still chasing a national championship from the least amount of pressure to the highest amount of pressure.

16. Dusty May, Michigan

He’s the first coach in college basketball history to take over a program that lost 24 or more games the previous season and immediately lead them to the Sweet 16. Even if the Wolverines were to lose convincingly to No. 1 overall seed Auburn on Friday night, no one is going to characterize May’s first season in Ann Arbor as anything other than a rousing success.

15. Chris Beard, Ole Miss

Ole Miss athletic director Keith Carter knew he would draw more than a little heat for hiring Beard, but weekends like last one were the “take” part of the give and take equation that came with bringing in one of the most controversial names in the sport. Ole Miss is headed to the Sweet 16 for just the second time in program history, and the only controversy surrounding Beard now (at least for most Rebel fans) seems to be how long they can keep him in Oxford.

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14. Kevin Young, BYU

BYU lost its head coach to one of the biggest names in the sport last spring when Mark Pope left to take the job at Kentucky. A year later and the Cougars secured both their first NCAA tournament win since 2012 and their first trip to the Sweet 16 since 2011. It’s safe to say they’re pretty thrilled with Kevin Young regardless of how he fares against Alabama.

13. Kevin Willard, Maryland

Willard’s first trip to the Sweet 16 as a head coach also marks Maryland’s first return to the second week since 2016, and just its second in the last 22 years. More will be expected from Willard moving forward, but for now, he’s returned the Terps to national prominence, and that was always going to be the first and most important bar to clear.

12. Grant McCasland, Texas Tech

We’ll put McCasland in front of Willard just because he’s coaching against the only double-digit seed remaining in the tournament while Willard is coaching against Florida. Texas Tech fans would be bummed about an upset loss to Arkansas, sure, but they’d also still have to feel pretty confident about the overall direction of their program after the success McCasland has had in his first two years.

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11. Matt Painter, Purdue

Yes, Boilermaker fans are desperate to win a national championship, but this was always going to be a season where Purdue was less of a threat to win the title than the previous two. That’s what happens when you lose the most dominant force in the sport. Painter has done a masterful job keeping the Boilers among the nation’s elite even without Zach Edey, and most fans will be aware of that even if the team can’t keep pace with top-seeded Houston Friday night.

10. John Calipari, Arkansas

A steadier season will be expected in year two, but Calipari saved the notion that he was still worth investing in by pulling upsets of Hall-of-Famers Bill Self and Rick Pitino in consecutive games last weekend. The fans in Fayetteville came into Calipari’s first season expecting a trip to the second weekend. Even though the preceding five months didn’t exactly go according to plan, ultimately, they got a trip to the second weekend. Anything else would be gravy. At least for now.

9. Mark Pope, Kentucky

Pope won the two games he absolutely had to win last week, bucking UK’s first round upset trend by pounding Troy, and then taking care of Illinois to ensure (at least for the time being) that Calipari didn’t advance further in the tournament than Kentucky in his first season away from Lexington. Losing to rival Tennessee — especially after beating the Vols twice in the regular season — would be a bitter pill for BBN to swallow, but for the majority of the fan base, it wouldn’t change the prevailing sentiment that the program is in good hands with Pope at the helm.

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8. Kelvin Sampson, Houston

The only “pressure” around Sampson revolves around the question of whether or not he can get the Cougars all the way to the mountain top and win a national championship. He’s already done one of the more remarkable coaching jobs in college basketball that we’ve seen in decades.

Between 1992 and 2018, Houston appeared in the NCAA tournament a grand total of one time. Sampson has taken that same program and turned it into college basketball’s most consistent performer. They went to the Final Four in 2021, they made the move to the Big 12 and immediately started dominating the conference, and they now have the longest active streak of consecutive Sweet 16 appearances at six.

Sampson is expected to get Houston to San Antonio this weekend, but not getting the job done isn’t going to make what he’s accomplished over the last 11 seasons any less incredible.

7. Todd Golden, Florida

The accusations against Golden that arose before the season (accusations that he was cleared of in January) may have put some additional pressure on the third-year head coach to take things to another level. He certainly answered the bell, leading the Gators to a 32-4 record, an SEC tournament championship and the program’s first No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament since Billy Donovan’s penultimate year.

The Gators are one of favorites to cut down the nets in San Antonio next week, and with that distinction certainly comes a solid amount of pressure. But this is the first time that Golden, who is just 39-years-old, has been in this position. A loss before the Final Four won’t alter his reputation as one of the brightest young coaching stars in the sport.

6. Tommy Lloyd, Arizona

Upset losses ultimately defined Lloyd’s otherwise stellar first three seasons at Arizona. He now has a chance to flip the script by leading a fourth-seeded Wildcats team to an upset of a Duke team that is currently the betting favorite to win the whole thing.

Arizona hasn’t been to a Final Four since 2001 (when they lost to the Blue Devils in the national title game). The fan base is more than a little bit antsy to get back, especially after having so many close calls over the past two decades. Doing it in a season where most didn’t expect it to happen would be sweet, but coming up short wouldn’t draw the same ire from the ‘Zona fans that the last few years has.

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5. Tom Izzo, Michigan State

One of the greatest “what-ifs” in college basketball history is what if Cincinnati superstar Kenyon Martin doesn’t break his leg in the Conference USA tournament in 2000. The Bearcats seemed to be heads and shoulders above every other team in the sport that year, but without the national Player of the Year, they bowed out in the NCAA Tournament’s second round. The biggest benefactor was Michigan State and Izzo, who toppled Florida to claim the program’s second national title.

But what if a healthy Martin and Cincinnati had gotten the job done?

In this world, Tom Izzo immediately morphs from “Mr. March” to the guy who simply cannot get the the job done under the brightest of lights. Izzo would be a head coach who had been to an astounding eight Final Fours without a single national championship.

While this world doesn’t exist and Izzo is unquestionably one of the sport’s most legendary active coaches, the question of whether or not he’s ever going to win a second title has certainly been out there for a while. This is the best shot the 70-year-old has had in several years, and while the Spartans aren’t a top-tier favorite to get the job done, there will certainly be some disappointment in East Lansing if they don’t at least make it back to the national semifinals.

4. Nate Oats, Alabama

Oats has been hailed as the next big thing in college basketball for the last handful of years, and for the most part, he’s delivered on that assigned title.

He took the Crimson Tide to the Sweet 16 in his second season, had them as the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed two years after that, and got them to the Final Four in 2024.

Now, as is always the case in these types of situations, a fan base that previously wasn’t used to this level of consistent success has become a fan base that wants more. A loss to Duke in the Elite Eight wouldn’t send anyone in Tuscaloosa into a frenzy, but a stumble against BYU a round earlier would not be met with indifference.

3. Bruce Pearl, Auburn

Speaking of head coaches at places where basketball is never going to be king.

Pearl has done virtually everything there is to do as a coach in this sport besides win the national championship. This feels like his best chance, 2019 included.

The Tigers have spent more time ranked No. 1 this season than any other team in the sport, they have a national Player of the Year front-runner manning the middle, and they have a level of age and experience that simply isn’t going to be possible as we move away from the extra year of COVID-eligibility.

Football is always going to be top dog Auburn, so there isn’t the level of heat for him to win the big one as there would be if he were in the exact same situation at Duke or Kentucky or Kansas, but still, there’s pressure. Anything less than a national championship will be seen as a disappointment for a fan base that has learned (at least a solid chunk of them) to love basketball more than they thought possible since Pearl’s arrival.

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2. Jon Scheyer, Duke

Surprising losses at times when it seemed like the Blue Devils had a clear path to the Final Four wound up defining Scheyer’s first two seasons as Duke’s head coach. Add in a third year to that trend — and toss in the facts that his team had the likely national Player of the Year and was the betting favorite to win it all — and suddenly March failure would become more attached to Scheyer’s name than anything else.

This Duke team has every piece necessary to win a national championship, and it’s fair to wonder if that might not be the case next season. Toss in losing assistant coach Jai Lucas (and potentially a couple of recruits?) to Miami, and the pressure to get the job done over these next weeks ratchets up even more.

Taking over for arguably the greatest coach in college basketball history was always going to result in your name being at or near the top of lists like this. Scheyer knew that going in.

1. Rick Barnes, Tennessee

The only coach with more pressure than Scheyer to succeed this week is Rick Barnes, who once again has an opportunity to rid himself of the stigma of being a coach who can only get it done in the regular season and rid Tennessee of the title of “best college basketball program to never make a Final Four.”

This is the third straight year Tennessee has been to the Sweet 16, and a win over Kentucky on Friday would send them to a regional final for a second straight year.

“Now or never” is more applicable to this program and this head coach than any other pair in the sport.