Adolph Frederick Rupp was an American college basketball coach.
31 Facts About Adolph Rupp
2.
Adolph Rupp is ranked seventh in total victories by a men's NCAA Division I college coach, winning 876 games in 41 years of coaching at the University of Kentucky.
3.
Adolph Rupp was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13,1969.
4.
Adolph Rupp was born September 2,1901 in Halstead, Kansas to Heinrich Adolph Rupp, a German immigrant, and Anna Lichi, a Palatinate immigrant.
5.
The fourth of six children, Adolph Rupp grew up on a 163-acre farm that his parents had homesteaded.
6.
Adolph Rupp 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.
7.
Adolph Rupp was a star for the Halstead High School basketball team, one of the first in the area to play with a real basketball.
8.
Adolph Rupp worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his college expenses.
9.
In 1922, Adolph Rupp pledged and was initiated into the Iota chapter of International Fraternity of Delta Sigma Pi.
10.
Adolph Rupp was a reserve on the basketball team under Hall of Fame coach Phog Allen from 1919 to 1923.
11.
Adolph Rupp received an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University.
12.
Adolph Rupp began his career in coaching by accepting a teaching job at Burr Oak High School, Kansas.
13.
Adolph Rupp led the Marshalltown team to a state wrestling title in 1926.
14.
Adolph Rupp coached the University of Kentucky men's basketball team from 1930 to 1972.
15.
Adolph Rupp was inducted into Omicron Delta Kappa at Kentucky in 1937.
16.
Adolph Rupp was a 5-time National Coach-of-the-Year award winner, and a 7-time Conference Coach-of-the-Year award winner.
17.
Adolph Rupp was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, College Basketball Hall of Fame, Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, Kansas Athletic Hall of Fame, University of Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame, and Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame.
18.
Further, since 1972, the Adolph Rupp Trophy, considered one of the nation's premier basketball awards, has been given by the Commonwealth Athletic Club to the top men's college basketball player.
19.
Adolph Rupp was forced into retirement in March 1972, at the age of 70.
20.
Adolph Rupp was the head coach at Kentucky during the point shaving scandal of 1951.
21.
Adolph Rupp denied any knowledge of the point shaving and no evidence was ever brought against him to show he was connected to the incident in any way.
22.
Adolph Rupp was an early innovator of the fast break and set offense.
23.
Adolph Rupp strongly emphasized the fundamentals of basketball, both on offense and defense, and overall discipline.
24.
Adolph Rupp believed that excellence was achieved only through repetition, and his practices stressed individual instruction, precision, and continuity.
25.
Adolph Rupp was very demanding of his players, constantly putting extreme pressure on them in practice, and mercilessly berating them for any mistakes.
26.
Adolph Rupp wore his new suit to a game, and his team got beaten badly.
27.
Adolph 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.
28.
Adolph Rupp tried his best to sign in-state black players Wes Unseld and Butch Beard before both picked Louisville.
29.
In June 1973 Adolph Rupp quit as Tams president, calling the ABA "bush league" and saying it "would never survive".
30.
Three months later, Adolph Rupp was hired as Vice President of the Board of the Kentucky Colonels of the American Basketball Association.
31.
Adolph Rupp died of spinal cancer at age 76 in Lexington, Kentucky, on December 10,1977, on a night when Kentucky defeated his alma mater, Kansas, at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas.