Basketball coach, born in Halstead, Kansas, USA. During his 42-year career at the University of Kentucky (193072), he coached his teams to a record 874 victories, 27 Southeast Conference titles, and four National Collegiate Athletic Association championships. He also coached the US team to a gold medal in the 1948 Olympic games.
Adolph Friedrich Rupp (September 2, 1901 – December 10, 1977) was one of the most successful coaches in the history of American college basketball. Rupp is the second winningest men's college coach, winning 876 games in 41 years of coaching, and set a remarkable standard of excellence.
Early life
Born in Halstead, Kansas, to Mennonite German immigrants, he played college basketball for the University of Kansas under legendary coach Dr. Forrest "Phog" Allen from 1919 to 1923.
Coaching
Rupp went on to coach basketball in Kentucky, Kansas, Iowa, and Illinois.
University of Kentucky
Rupp coached the University of Kentucky basketball team from 1930 to 1972. Rupp demanded 100% from his players at all times, pushing them to great levels of success.
His Wildcats teams won four NCAA championships (1948, 1949, 1951, 1958), one NIT title in 1946 (when the NIT was a competitive tournament of national contenders), appeared in 20 NCAA tournaments and captured 27 Southeastern Conference titles.
Rupp is widely regarded as a racial segregationist, or at the very least unwilling to recruit black players.
Most of Rupp's coaching career was in the era of institutionalized segregation in the American South. Rupp was among the first coaches in the two major southern conferences, the SEC and ACC, to recruit African-American players. Rupp scheduled games against integrated teams since the 1950s, and he tried to recruit African-American players (one of whom was Wes Unseld, who instead would play at the University of Louisville) as early as 1964. Rupp twice, before the infamous 1966 tournament, formally petitioned the SEC to allow black players to play in the conference. The loss of the all-white Wildcats team in the 1966 NCAA finals to Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) under Don Haskins, who started five black players, was long after the fact held out as a sign of change in the game.
Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, who was in the Wildcats locker room during half-time of the championship game against Texas Western, reported that Rupp called the Texas Western team "coons".
Rupp was forced into retirement in 1972 after reaching age 70, at that time the mandatory retirement age for Kentucky state employees.
Death
Rupp died at age 76 in Lexington on the very day Kentucky defeated his alma mater, Kansas, at Allen Fieldhouse.
Legacy
24 of Rupp's players earned All-America honors, seven won Olympics gold medals, and 28 played professionally. A four-time Coach of the Year, Rupp established a winning tradition at Kentucky later achieved only by John Wooden at UCLA and Dean Smith at North Carolina.
Rupp is a Past Potentate of the Oleika Shrine Temple in Lexington, Ky.
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