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Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

When your sport ends its season with a 68-team, single-elimination tournament, it's probably fair to say the issue is never settled until the thing's played out.

Working around that caveat, the 2015-16 college basketball campaign is coming into focus. We know who's good, who's not, who's meeting expectations and who's exceeding or failing them.

Much more so than in the pros, a college team's capacity for any of the above is driven by its coach.

Here is our list of top candidates for college coach of the year. Coaches were evaluated and ranked based on their teams' performances, particularly relative to preseason expectations.

Another big factor: Since the first Naismith College Coach of the Year award in 1987, only two men—Duke's Mike Krzyzewski and John Calipari, now of Kentucky—have won it multiple times. The shortest amount of time between awards is seven years.

So a repeat awardee, while not impossible, is unlikely, and that fact played into these deliberations as well.