Candid Coaches: Who will be college basketball's best team in 2024-25?

Our annual Candid Coaches series begins by asking more than 100 coaches who they think this season's top team will be

By Gary Parrish  & Matt Norlander Aug 12, 2024 at 11:21 am ET• 6 min read

CBS Sports college basketball insiders Gary Parrish and Matt Norlander spent a month surveying 100-plus Division I men's basketball coaches for our annual Candid Coaches series. They polled across the sport's landscape: some of the biggest names in college basketball, but also small-school assistants in low-major leagues. Coaches agreed to share unfiltered opinions in exchange for anonymity. We asked them 10 questions and will post the results over a three-week span.

Kansas coach Bill Self has kept his men's basketball program at or near the tip-top of the sport for more than two decades. He's won two national championships, made four Final Fours, secured 16 Big 12 regular-season titles and eight Big 12 Tournament championships while only finishing outside of the top three of the conference standings one time in the past 21 years.

That one time was last season, though.

Needless to say, Self grew frustrated as things unfolded -- mostly because of a lack of depth that proved crippling after leading scorer Kevin McCullar Jr. suffered an injury that limited him for weeks before the 6-foot-5 wing was eventually shut down in advance of the Big 12 Tournament. The result was Self's first 11-loss campaign since he coached Tulsa to a 19-12 record in 1998. Furthermore, the Jayhawks' 89-68 season-ending loss to Gonzaga was the program's second-most lopsided defeat in NCAA Tournament history.

"We could have done a much better job as a staff of putting more guys out there that we could play," Self said following the season, noting how KU entered the Big 12 Tournament with just eight healthy scholarship players. "And so that's something that I've thought about for a long time."