Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Basketball Title Run

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Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Basketball Title Run


By CLAY LATIMER, FOR INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 11/09/2011 01:35 PM ET


Rupp took over the University of Kentucky team in 1930 and stayed 42 years with the Wildcats, whose new season starts Friday night. AP View Enlarged Image

Adolph Rupp was a high school basketball coach in 1930 when he sat down to interview for the University of Kentucky job.



Asked why he should get it over 70 other candidates, the 29-year-old Kansas native didn't miss a beat: "Because I'm the best damned coach in the nation."'



That claim turned out right.



In 42 years at Kentucky, Rupp won 879 games, four national championships and 27 Southeastern Conference titles. His Wildcats also set an NCAA record by winning 129 straight home games.



A master of motivation and strategy, he helped revolutionize the game with a fast-break attack that was decades ahead of his contemporaries, made the sport a near-religious mania in Kentucky, and helped transform college basketball into a national game.



There were troubles, too, especially in 1952, when his Wildcats were put on probation for a year. Rupp also was criticized for taking too long to integrate the team.



But before John Wooden, Dean Smith, Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski, there was Adolph Rupp, the Baron of the Bluegrass.



In Front



Rupp's Keys

Fourth (behind Bob Knight, Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith) in total victories by a men's NCAA Division I college coach, winning 876 games.

Ranks second among all coaches in all-time winning percentage (.822), trailing only Clair Bee.

C.M. Newton, a former Kentucky player and athletic director, as well as Alabama and Vanderbilt coach, told IBD: "When I think of the founders of modern basketball, I think of Adolph Rupp. He saw basketball on a whole different level. He was a pioneer in just about everything related to basketball. Alabama football is what I think of when I think of Kentucky basketball. And when I think about Bear Bryant, I think about Adolph Rupp."



Born of 19th-century immigrants in southeast Kansas, Rupp (1901-77) grew up on a farm and attended a one-room schoolhouse. He played at the University of Kansas for legendary coach Phog Allen, who had an office down the hall from basketball's inventor, James Naismith.



Rupp spent much of his time studying the techniques of those two mentors. Later he would create offensive styles and defensive sets that had never been used.



After graduating in 1923, Rupp coached high school basketball in Burr Oak, Kan., for a year before moving on to Freeport, Ill., where he won 80% of his games.



After Kentucky hired him, Rupp was an instant success.



The Wildcats had never scored more than 44 points in the 27 seasons before he arrived. They scored 67 in his debut.



The next morning, a newspaper account noted that a new brand of basketball had come to Blue Grass country. Rupp compiled a 20-5 record in his first two years, then won the SEC title in the league's first season, 1932-33.



"He was tough to play against. He beat the heck out of teams. He took no prisoners,'' said Hugh Coy, a member of the undefeated 1953-54 Kentucky team.



Within years of Rupp's landing, basketball took its place next to coal, horses and bourbon as cultural icons in Kentucky. On winter nights, citizens from Rabbit Hash to Bowling Green huddled around radios to listen to Wildcat games.



"You could see lights in homes all across the state as you flew over Kentucky,'' said Vernon Hatton, an All-American on the Wildcats' 1958 national championship team.



Peace And Triumph



After World War II, Rupp emerged as the nation's premier college coach. He won his first two national titles in 1948 and 1949 with the Alex Groza-led Fabulous Five, captured a third championship in 1951 and the fourth in 1958.



"It was like watching a symphony. He's the reason Kentucky basketball is what it is,'' Coy said.



After losing to Ohio State on Jan. 2, 1943, Rupp started a home-court winning streak that didn't end until a 59-58 loss to Georgia Tech 12 years later.



Afterward, Rupp told his depressed team: "From this time until history is no longer written, you will be remembered as the team that broke that string. Even if you go on to win the NCAA championship, you must carry this scar with you the rest of your lives."



The prospect of defeat haunted Rupp. He once expressed his intensity with two takes:



So nervous was he before games, he felt like he had lye in his stomach. When an opponent scored against the Cats, his heart bled.



"He's the most competitive man who ever coached,'' Hatton said. "One night Alabama scored 100 points against us. He told us if he'd been a player in that game, he would've tried to eat the ball before a team scored 100 against him.''



Rupp sometimes ordered the Wildcats back on the court after the crowd left in order to correct mistakes made in the game.



Serious Sweat



Practices were sacred to Rupp, who drilled his players without letup. The sessions started at 3:30 p.m. and ended at 5, and every drill followed a rigid schedule.



There was no talk, no laughter, no clowning, and Rupp got after any player who performed poorly.



Players repeated the same 10 offensive plays until they became an automatic part of their games.



His assistants charted every pass, every shot, every move. After one practice, Rupp reported that his team had handled the ball 3,308 times and made five mistakes.



Red Auerbach, the great Boston Celtics coach, once said he would rather watch Kentucky practice than see most teams play.



Said Coy: "He practiced for perfection."



Rupp did enjoy the fame. Photos of him with President Truman, Bob Hope and other celebrities lined his office walls. He walked onto the court after the last bar of the national anthem for dramatic effect.



"If anyone had a camera, he'd follow them around to make sure they took a picture of him," Hatton said.



When a point-shaving scandal hit college basketball in 1950, Rupp declared, "Gamblers couldn't get at our players with a 10-foot pole.'' But some of his players were implicated, and Kentucky was punished in the 1952-53 season, forced to sit out tournament play.



In the 1966 national title game, an all-black lineup from Texas Western beat the all-white Wildcats, a monumental game that left Rupp with an image as the face of segregated basketball.



His fans point out that he coached black players in high school, coached against college teams with black players, and recruited a black athlete the same year Bryant recruited his first at Alabama.



"Coach Rupp may have been a lot of different things — demanding, overbearing — but one thing I know he was not was a racist,'' Newton said. "He would have integrated the program at Kentucky had the rest of the conference been willing to go along. Mississippi State won a league championship and couldn't play against a team with black players. "Coach Rupp would've adjusted. One of the things about coach Rupp and coach Bryant was their ability to adjust to the modern athlete, the different standards, the different styles of play.''



In 1967, Rupp became college basketball's all-time winningest coach when Kentucky beat Notre Dame 81-73. His 772nd victory moved him past his former coach, Allen.



The Twilight



After retiring in 1972, Rupp became president of the Memphis Tams of the American Basketball Association and vice chairman of the board for the Kentucky Colonels, another ABA team.



He died at age 76 in Lexington on a December night in 1977 when Kentucky defeated his alma mater at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kan. That game was promoted as Adolph Rupp Night.



"It took us five or so years for me to know how much we loved the guy,'' Hatton