Adolph Rupp

Adolph Rupp

Rupp in 1954
Biographical details
Born	(1901-09-02)September 2, 1901 Halstead, Kansas, U.S.
Died	December 10, 1977(1977-12-10) (aged 76) Lexington, Kentucky, U.S.
Playing career
1920–1923	Kansas
Coaching career (HC unless noted)
1926–1930	Freeport HS
1930–1972	Kentucky
Head coaching record
Overall	876–190 (college)
Accomplishments and honors
Championships
As a coach 4× NCAA regional – Final Four (1942, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958, 1966) 27× SEC regular season (1933, 1935, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1942, 1944–1952, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1966, 1968–1972) 13× SEC tournament (1933, 1937, 1939, 1940, 1942, 1944–1950, 1952) SoCon regular season (1932) As a player 2× Helms National (1922, 1923)
Awards
5× National Coach of the Year (1950, 1954, 1959, 1966, 1970) 7× SEC Coach of the Year (1964, 1966, 1968–1972)
Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 1969
College Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 2006

Adolph Frederick Rupp (September 2, 1901 – December 10, 1977) was an American college basketball coach. Nicknamed the "Baron of the Bluegrass", he coached the University of Kentucky Wildcats to four NCAA championships, one NIT championship, 27 Southeastern Conference championships, and 13 SEC tournament championships. In his 41 years of coaching at Kentucky, he won 876 games, retiring with the most total victories by a men's NCAA Division I college coach at the time; he has since been surpassed by six coaches and ranks seventh. Rupp is second among all men's college coaches in all-time winning percentage (.822) and third in NCAA championships. In 1948, he coached the US Olympic Team to a gold medal in London.

Rupp was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13, 1969. Rupp played college basketball at Kansas under Phog Allen.

Rupp was born September 2, 1901, in Halstead, Kansas, to Heinrich Rupp, a German immigrant,^[1] and Anna Lichi, a Palatinate (Quirnheim, Germany) immigrant. The fourth of six children, Rupp grew up on a 163-acre farm that his parents had homesteaded. He began playing basketball as a young child, with the help of his mother, who made a ball for him by stuffing rags into a gunnysack. "Mother sewed it up and somehow made it round," he recalled in 1977. "You couldn't dribble it. You couldn't bounce it either."^[2]

Rupp was a star for the Halstead High School basketball team, one of the first in the area to play with a real basketball. He averaged 19 points a game. Former teammates described Rupp as the team's unofficial coach.^[1][3]

After high school, Rupp attended the University of Kansas from 1919 to 1923. He worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his college expenses. In 1922, Adolph pledged and was initiated into the Iota chapter of International Fraternity of Delta Sigma Pi. Later in 1966, he was named Deltasig of the Year by the fraternity. He was a reserve on the basketball team under Hall of Fame coach Phog Allen from 1919 to 1923. Assisting Allen during that time was his former coach and inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, whom Rupp also got to know well during his time in Lawrence.^[4]

In Rupp's junior and senior college seasons (1921–22 and 1922–23), Kansas (KU) had outstanding basketball squads. Later, both of these standout Kansas teams would be awarded the Helms National Championship, recognizing the Jayhawks as the top team in the nation during those seasons.

He received an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University.^[5][6]

Rupp began his career in coaching by accepting a teaching job at Burr Oak High School, Kansas. After a one-year stay, Rupp moved on to Marshalltown, Iowa, where he coached wrestling, a sport he knew nothing about at the time and learned from a book. He led the Marshalltown team to a state wrestling title in 1926.^[7]

In 1926–30, Rupp accepted the basketball head coaching position at Freeport High School, (Freeport, Illinois) where he also taught history and economics. During his four years at Freeport, Rupp compiled a record of 66–21 and guided his team to a third-place finish in the 1929 state tournament.^[8] While at Freeport High School Rupp started William "Mose" Mosely, the first African-American to play basketball at Freeport and the second to graduate from the school. ^{[citation needed]}

In his 41 seasons as UK coach, Rupp coached 32 All-Americans, chosen 50 times, 52 All-SEC players, chosen 91 times, 44 NBA Draft Picks, 2 National Players-of-the-Year, 7 Olympic Gold Medalists, and 4

A subsequent NCAA investigation found that Kentucky had committed several rule violations, including giving illegal spending money to players on several occasions, and also allowing some ineligible athletes to compete.[15] As a result, the Southeastern Conference voted to ban Kentucky from competing for a year and the NCAA requested all other basketball-playing members not to schedule Kentucky, with eventually none doing so.^[16] Because of these actions, Kentucky was forced to cancel the entire 1952–53 basketball season. Years later, Walter Byers, the first executive director of the NCAA, unofficially referred to this punishment as the first de facto NCAA death penalty, despite the current rule only coming into effect in 1985.^[17][18] The NCAA's website similarly stated "In effect, it was the Association's first "death penalty," though its enforcement was binding only through constitutional language that required members to compete against only those schools that were compliant with NCAA rules. Despite fears that it would resist, Kentucky accepted the penalty ..."^[19]

A pivotal game in Rupp's career and for college basketball in general was the

Rupp was an early innovator of the fast break and set offense. His offense consisted of 10–15 set plays (with variations for each), complete with extensive offensive movement and screening. Early basketball innovations such as the "guard around" play and inside screen were first developed by Rupp in the 1930s. Likewise, he was an early proponent of the fast break, which his Kentucky teams used at every opportunity throughout his career. For most of his coaching career he preferred only a tight man-to-man defense, but during the 1963–64 season, he became one of the first coaches to begin experimenting with the trapping 1–3–1 zone defense, and his Kentucky teams used this defense at times for the remainder of his career.^[citation needed] Throughout his time at Kentucky, Rupp's recruiting focused largely on local and regional talent; over 80% of Rupp's Kentucky players came from the state of Kentucky.^[20][21][22]

Rupp strongly emphasized the fundamentals of basketball, both on offense and defense, and overall discipline. He believed that excellence was achieved only through repetition, and his practices stressed individual instruction, precision, and continuity. Rupp was very demanding of his players, constantly putting extreme pressure on them in practice, and mercilessly berating them for any mistakes.^[22][23][24]

Rupp, a very superstitious man, was known to carry a "lucky" buckeye in his pocket. His favorite sign of good luck was finding a pin, especially a bobby pin, particularly on a game day. The depth of his superstitious nature was revealed while he was coaching at Freeport, when he had bought a new blue suit to replace his old brown one. He wore his new suit to a game, and his team got beaten badly. Rupp never again wore anything but a brown suit to games.^[25]

Rupp hired assistant coach Neil Reed in 1960 to help recruit African-American players and once asked the UK president to leave the SEC so he could recruit black players. Rupp tried his best to sign in-state black players Wes Unseld (the first black player Rupp made a formal scholarship offer in 1964) and Butch Beard before both picked Louisville.^[26] Rupp signed his first black player, troubled 7'2" center Tom Payne, who played in the 1971 season. After his lone varsity season, Payne, who was on the verge of flunking out of school, joined the NBA's first-ever supplemental draft.

In April 1972, Rupp was named team president of the

In September 1973, Rupp was hired as Vice President of the Board of the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association.^[30][31]

Rupp died of spinal cancer at age 76 in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 10, 1977,^[32] on a night when Kentucky defeated his alma mater, Kansas, at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas.^[33] The game that night was promoted as "Adolph Rupp Night".^[34] He is buried in Lexington Cemetery. Rupp Arena, the current home of the Kentucky men's basketball team, is named in his honor.

• ** Record includes SEC playoff tiebreaker games
• The team did not play in the 1952–53 season because of involvement in a point shaving scandal.^[13]

• List of college men's basketball coaches with 600 wins
• List of NCAA Division I Men's Final Four appearances by coach