8, 1945, Kentucky led an overmatched Arkansas State team 34-4 at halftime. The locker room was Rupp’s stage, as was the practice floor. Nobody else dared make a sound when Rupp addressed his teams. His teams continued to run like hell for the next four decades, amassing an 876-190 record and 27 conference titles.Ī sharp-tongued disciplinarian and notorious perfectionist, Rupp was seldom chummy with his players yet he possessed an innate ability to draw their best out of them. In Rupp’s debut, Kentucky trampled outmanned Georgetown College, 67-19. Rupp changed that in a hurry once he took the Kentucky job - and he did it by recognizing ahead of his time that a lethal fast-break attack was key. Others in Freeport echoed that, calling Lexington “hillbilly country” and telling Rupp “whoever heard of Kentucky doing anything ?” The principal at Freeport High School encouraged Rupp to stay. Rupp had also just earned his master’s degree and principal’s diploma and his future as a high school coach and administrator was bright. Kentucky played in a cramped, $92,000 gymnasium Rupp considered no better than the one at Freeport.įurther complicating Rupp’s decision whether to take Kentucky’s offer, he had begun dating his future wife in Freeport. In those days, the facilities or fan support weren’t exactly what John Calipari enjoys today either. In addition to coaching the basketball team, Rupp’s position also required him to serve as an assistant for the football and track and field teams. The Kentucky job paid only $2,800 per year, exactly what Rupp made as the coach at Freeport High School. The whole time he wondered if he had made a mistake accepting an offer to become the basketball coach at a university that until then had shown only indifference to the sport. In late August 1930, an ambitious 28-year-old Illinois high school basketball coach packed up a few belongings and drove South to take on a new challenge. Supporters of Rupp argue his racism has been exaggerated, his progressive contributions have gone overlooked and his reputation as a segregationist is at best misinformed.Īdolph Rupp, middle, turned Kentucky basketball into a national power, winning four national championships. Rupp’s defenders in the Bluegrass State see a very different “Man in the Brown Suit” than the caricature painted by his critics. Those critics view Rupp through the prism of the 1966 national title game in which his all-white Kentucky team famously lost to a Texas Western squad with five Black starters To some Americans, Rupp is a symbol of the Segregated South, a villain who spoke in racial slurs and stood in the way of change. At stake is the legacy of a coaching icon who captured four national titles and never endured a losing season in 42 years as patriarch of one of college basketball’s most tradition-rich programs. “I’ve always gotten the best white players in the country.”Īlmost a half century later, Rupp’s attitudes and actions on the issue of race remain a subject of interest and controversy. “Because I didn’t have to, son,” Warford recalled Rupp saying. The response from Rupp struck Warford as authentic yet leaving much open to interpretation. After entering Rupp’s office and making small talk for a few minutes, the 17-year-old incoming freshman boldly asked the architect of Kentucky’s basketball dynasty, “Why didn’t you recruit more colored players?” Warford sought to better understand why so many of the region’s premier Black players of his era either didn’t hear from Rupp or passed on the chance to play for him. Kentucky began accepting Black undergraduate students in 1954 and opened its athletic programs to students of color nine years later, yet Rupp’s basketball program remained almost exclusively white. Board of Education ruling rendering segregation illegal in public schools. It was 1972, 18 years after the Supreme Court issued its landmark Brown v. Reggie Warford needed the answer to a question that had bothered him since Rupp began recruiting him. The second Black basketball player in University of Kentucky history stood outside Adolph Rupp’s office door trying to summon the courage to knock.
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