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. He was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13, 1969.

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. Phog Allen's college basketball coach was James Naismith.

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. At Kentucky, he earned the title "Baron of the Bluegrass". Rupp was a master of developing local talent. He took more than 80% of his players from Kentucky. He promoted a sticky man-to-man defense, and a relentless fast break offense that battered opponents into defeat. 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.

Criticisms

Rupp's legacy has one major flaw in the minds of many observers: he was widely regarded as a racial segregationist, or at the very least unwilling to recruit black players. However, this reputation is not clearly supported by all available evidence, and the subject remains controversial to this day. As a high school coach in Illinois before coming to Kentucky, Rupp had African-American players on his teams. Many of Rupp's most trusted employees on his farms were African-American, and many of those who knew Rupp during his life have insisted that Rupp was not a racist. Also, one must keep in mind that 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. Other colleges in other parts of the country had been using black players before the 1960s (e.g., Wilt Chamberlain at the University of Kansas and Bill Russell at the University of San Francisco); however, many other southern schools not only did not have black players, but would refuse to play against schools that had a single black player on the roster. 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. 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; most participants have publicly stated that nobody saw the game that way at the time. The Final Four that year also included another all-white team, Duke University, though most of its players were from Northern urban areas and had frequent playing experience with African-Americans. However, Sports Illustrated writer Frank Deford, who was in the Wildcats locker room at the half 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.

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. A little more than a year before his death, the Wildcats moved from their on-campus Memorial Coliseum to Rupp Arena, named after him, in downtown Lexington; the team continues to play there. The Adolph Rupp Trophy, named in his honor, has been awarded annually to the best player in men's college basketball since 1972.

Death

Rupp died at age 76 in Lexington on the very day Kentucky defeated his alma mater, Kansas, at Allen Fieldhouse. He is interred at Lexington Cemetery in Lexington, Kentucky.