We often debate who’s the best coach in college basketball, which isn’t a surprise — people have been arguing about the best of everything, from recipes to destinations to politicians to brake pads from the beginning of time. What is a surprise is how seldom Pat Summitt’s name comes up in those debates.

I’m as guilty as any andro-centric sports geek. If you had asked me that question last week, I’d have put forward John Wooden as the best of all time and offered a short list of Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Calhoun and Bobby Knight as the leading candidates for the best coach still pounding the sideline.

But Summitt passed Dean Smith for the most victories of all time Tuesday with a rout of Purdue. She is on top of the heap as the winningest college coach ever.

It’s impossible to say anybody active is better, and difficult to say anyone ever was better other than Wooden, who’s in a league by himself.

It’s hard to describe how remarkable this achievement will be. It took Smith 36 years to win 879 games; Summitt did it in 31. The Dean’s powers were eroding when he got the record, and retirement followed immediately; Summitt, at 52, is still at the top of the game, her top-seeded Tennessee Lady Vols in her 16th Final Four, aiming for her seventh national championship.

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That’s an incredible record, better than any other active coach. You can say that she started when the women’s game was young and the talent pool was shallow, which she did. But Rupp coached in the nascent years of the men’s game, and no one holds that against him.

Besides, the women’s game has caught on, and the number of great players and deep teams multiplies every year. And Summitt just keeps on winning — nine of her last 11 seasons have produced 30 wins or more. The gap between her and the rest of the game has narrowed, and Geno Auriemma, the UConn coach, has ruled the game recently, but there’s still a gap, and Auriemma, not Summitt, is the one who has to close it.

She’s still the queen of the court, the tall working mom with a sideline stare that could wither John Chaney, the coach who defines her profession.

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