Jerardi: Final Four coaches a winning lot

THE FINAL FOUR coaches have won 2,835 games among them. Roy Williams and Jim Boeheim are in the Hall of Fame. If Lon Kruger and Jay Wright keep up their current pace, they may join them in Springfield one day.

Boeheim has been on the Syracuse sideline for 989 wins. The NCAA says 101 of them don't count anymore, but the games were won so, for our purposes, they are part of the total. Williams has won 782 at Kansas and North Carolina. Kruger, the only coach to take five schools to the NCAA Tournament, has 590 wins at Texas Pan-American, Kansas State, Florida, Illinois, UNLV and Oklahoma. Wright has 474 between Hofstra and Villanova.

UNC, OU and 'Nova were among the top seven teams on the tournament selection committee's S-curve. None is a surprise Final Four participant. Nobody, including its coach, saw Syracuse.

The four men were on a Monday conference call to discuss how their teams earned a trip to Houston and how they might do once they get there.

"I think all four of us are saying, look, anybody could win this thing," Wright said. "More than any other year, I really think that's true."

It really has been that kind of season, musical chairs at No. 1, top 10 teams going down to unranked teams, Syracuse, barely in the tournament, still alive.

"Going into this weekend, I thought there were going to be four No. 1 seeds in Houston," Boeheim said. "That's how good my predictions are."

UNC was the only No. 1 to make it, possibly because Williams quoted Porky Spencer, one of his high school players from 38 years ago to make a point to his team last weekend in Philadelphia. Seems Porky used to have a thought for the day. One was, "I didn't come this far just to come this far."

Williams told that to his team, which has come as far as it can go in this college basketball season. It is just a question of one more game or two.

Kruger, the one-time Kansas State star, has traveled the longest coaching path, starting in Texas, back to Kansas State, Florida, Illinois, Georgia (brief tenure with the Hawks), Nevada, Oklahoma and now back to Texas where he started his coaching career.

"Had no idea that I would never really have to work for a living," Kruger said.

The OU coach may be the most understated of the four, but he has Buddy Hield, the star of stars on his side.

"Hopefully Buddy serves as a poster child for those guys that are thinking of coming out and are not sure," Kruger said. "The sad part of all of that, the majority of guys that come out early don't play in the NBA. People see those that do."

Even though he has been gone from the Big East for three years, Boeheim still knows and understands Villanova.

"They have a tremendous team," Boeheim said. "I think the one difference in their team is they have the inside presence that they haven't had the last two or three years where they've had really good teams. But I think their big guy (Daniel Ochefu) is much better now than he was the last couple years."

Freshman Malachi Richardson from Trenton Catholic High went off on Virginia Sunday and got the 'Cuse to the Final Four. Wright recruited him.

"We were crushed we didn't get him," Wright said.

Perhaps, he owed Boeheim one.

"First year at the Big East meetings, he took me to play golf," Wright said. "He took my wife Patty and I out with his wife Julie . . . As miserable as he can look sometimes, he is the nicest guy in the world to coaches. He always has taken care of coaches across the country."

Neither Kruger nor Wright thinks OU's blowout win over Villanova on Dec. 7 means much now.

"I think they were close to a Final Four team at that time of the year," Wright said. "They have reached that goal. They've gotten good enough to be a definite Final Four team and national championship contender. We weren't close at that time. I think we had gotten to the point on Saturday night of playing like a Final Four team."

Indeed they did.

"Very little carryover," Kruger said. "They're playing great. They're playing with tremendous confidence. They're shooting the ball well. They're playing with a swagger."

Sort of like the Sooners.

"We're a club that needs to shoot it well," Kruger said. "We're a club that needs to get in transition, have some pace to the ballgame, create off the dribble for one another. Obviously, making threes is a big part of all of that."

Boeheim has been around the longest so he has the most perspective. Syracuse just made an impossible comeback to beat Virginia. Is that relevant to Saturday's game with North Carolina or any of the Final Four games?

"That game will have nothing to do with the next game," Boeheim said. "We live in the future here. What you did yesterday, what you're doing right now doesn't matter. It's what you do in the next game."

@DickJerardi