Vaughan said Rupp regularly spoke at academic functions and on several occasions recruited faculty on behalf of the UK business and medical schools. He expected his players to take the same approach to their academics.Ĭlaude Vaughan started tutoring UK basketball players in 1958 and soon after was asked by Rupp to become the program’s trainer and academic adviser while he was an economics instructor at the university. Rupp approached the game with a business like attitude, studying the intricacies of the sport for hours, and creating offensive styles and defensive sets that had never been used. And while he was tough on you and asked a lot of his players, he also asked a lot of himself.” “He was tough on those who could take it, and he was encouraging to those who needed it. “He was demanding,” said Larry Conley, who played for Rupp from 1963 to ’66 and is now a commentator for ESPN.
Rupp’s players and assistant coaches say he was a strict disciplinarian whose practices were akin to military drills, and a man who wouldn’t put up with disobedience at any level. In the gym, the school’s administrators had found someone who could build a winning tradition and excite the fans with a revolutionary style of basketball.īut off the court, they had also hired a man who would make sure his players followed the rules of the school and represented the institution in a positive light. The 67 points the Cats scored against Georgetown in the season opening victory were the most in the history of the program. In Rupp’s first game as the head coach of the Wildcats, it was clear the team and its fans were in store for something they had never seen. Mauer had generated a new interest in the team in his time in Lexington – Alumni Gym was regularly filled to capacity – but no one could have expected the lasting impact Rupp would have on the university and the game itself. The 28-year-old inherited a team that had gone 16-3 the previous season under John Mauer, who left the school after three years because of a contract dispute with UK administration. It was his achievements at the high school, coupled with his strict discipline and a devotion to the academics of his players, that earned Rupp the head coaching job at UK in 1930. There, Rupp incorporated the techniques he learned from Allen to lead the team to a 59-21 record in four years without a losing season. Rupp graduated with honors, went on to earn a master’s degree from Columbia University and landed his first head coaching job at Freeport High School in Illinois.
At an early age, Rupp found an outlet in the game of basketball.Īfter emerging as a model student and standout player for Halstead High School, Rupp enrolled at Kansas University, where he majored in economics and history and played for Forrest “Phog” Allen, one of the game’s most revered college coaches. One of six children born to German immigrants Heinrich and Anna Rupp, Adolph spent the first years of his life in poverty. 2, 1901, on a small farm in Halstead, Kan.
#UK BASKETBALL ROSTER 1966 MOVIE#
Many of the sources used in those stories appear to have had no personal relationship with Rupp.Ī movie due out in the coming months will chronicle the 1966 national championship game between UK and Texas Western, and many of those who were close to the legendary coach are clamoring to tell their story of that game and the man who came out on the losing end of it in more ways than one.Īdolph Frederick Rupp was born Sept.
#UK BASKETBALL ROSTER 1966 SERIES#
Racist.įrom his arrival in Lexington in 1930 to his last game in 1972, Rupp accumulated 876 wins, captured 27 Southeastern Conference titles and led the Cats to four national championships.īut in spite of those accomplishments, some remember Rupp for his role in a game that would forever change the public’s perception of race in college athletics, and his failure to recruit a black player to UK until the end of his career.Ī series of articles written in the years following Rupp’s death in 1977 led basketball fans who weren’t familiar with the UK coach to believe he was a racist, and future press reports perpetuated that notion. But one word continues to haunt his legacy to this day. In the 41 seasons that Adolph Rupp paced the sidelines as the head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, several nicknames became associated with him.
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