Coach Rupp Still Better Than Coach K
- Thread starter KyCatFan
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Two things come to mind. One, I know most SEC schools didn't care anything about basketball, as it was viewed as something to do until spring practice time. Didn't most SEC schools simply appoint one of the football assistants as head basktball coach? Second, seem self evident to me, if there was anything like the parity we now see, no school could have won 10 national titles in 12 years. If the level of interest, the commitment to winning, nationally in the sport was the same then as it is now, then it's conceivable that a school today could win 10 titles in 12 years. I submit that's inconceivable. Mens' college basketball back then (and "back then" is admittedly subjective and gray) strikes me as very similar to the womens' game until very recently, when Tennessee and UConn were committed to winning, and so they did.
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anon_013cn8yrfncx2
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"And if he had kept coaching maybe Wooden has 20 National Titles. Guess what? he doesn't have 20. But what he has is way more than any coach has ever won. John Wooden = # 1."
Pretty sure he would never have won another one.
The question is HOW did he get Alcindor out of NYC. Wooden was excellent, but let Alcindor go to any other school and for sure he has 3 less if not 4 or 5 less. Once the hype got going with Alcindor, Wooden got all the specific recruits he wanted.
He probably still gets Walton as he was out of San Diego but again, how much did the hype and Sam Gilbert have to do with it. Wooden looked the other way on the recruiting stuff and we all know it. Give him credit for winning with all the talent, as nothing is ever a given. One of his Alcindor teams won the title game by 3 IIRC against Drake (maybe a semifinal). Long Beach St with Ed Ratliff had them beat in the regionals but collapsed down the stretch. UL had them beat his last year if a guy who hadn't missed a FT all year makes one with a few seconds to go. One of the best teams he ever had with Walton and Marques Johnson were beaten for the title by NC State who also had some NBA talent (UCLA had a 9 point lead in OT with no shot clock and still lost). And don't forget, in those years the tourney brackets were all regional and UCLA faced little or no opposition until the FF because the vast majority of good teams were in the East and Mid-East.
Give the guy credit but he had 2 titles in all his years of coaching before Alcindor. And even those 2 teams had 2 NBA future stars at the guard position. (Goodrich and Hazzard)
Pretty sure he would never have won another one.
The question is HOW did he get Alcindor out of NYC. Wooden was excellent, but let Alcindor go to any other school and for sure he has 3 less if not 4 or 5 less. Once the hype got going with Alcindor, Wooden got all the specific recruits he wanted.
He probably still gets Walton as he was out of San Diego but again, how much did the hype and Sam Gilbert have to do with it. Wooden looked the other way on the recruiting stuff and we all know it. Give him credit for winning with all the talent, as nothing is ever a given. One of his Alcindor teams won the title game by 3 IIRC against Drake (maybe a semifinal). Long Beach St with Ed Ratliff had them beat in the regionals but collapsed down the stretch. UL had them beat his last year if a guy who hadn't missed a FT all year makes one with a few seconds to go. One of the best teams he ever had with Walton and Marques Johnson were beaten for the title by NC State who also had some NBA talent (UCLA had a 9 point lead in OT with no shot clock and still lost). And don't forget, in those years the tourney brackets were all regional and UCLA faced little or no opposition until the FF because the vast majority of good teams were in the East and Mid-East.
Give the guy credit but he had 2 titles in all his years of coaching before Alcindor. And even those 2 teams had 2 NBA future stars at the guard position. (Goodrich and Hazzard)
There were a number of assistant football coaches who coached basketball in the SEC, but that was mainly in the 1920's and 1930's. After that they hired primarily full-time basketball coaches.
As far as your comment on parity, as I mentioned there was tremendous parity across the country IMO in the early part of the century, as teams were largely put together from recruiting circles near the school in question. If you were a great coach who could attract a few great players and develop a handful of local players, you could compete nationally.
I'll give you an example of the 1940's. Among the winningest programs that decade included Rhode Island, Eastern Kentucky, Western Kentucky, Bowling Green & Toledo.
Holy Cross won the NCAA tournament in 1947. Utah won in 1944. Wyoming in 1943. Other good programs from that era included Duquesne, Westminster (PA), Dartmouth, Creighton, Fordham, Muhlenberg, CCNY, LIU-Brooklyn etc. Again many of these might not be household names today, and many weren't big schools, but they had nationally recognized teams which were competitive.
Today the landscape is different. I'll grant you that overall there is more 'emphasis' on the sport among all the teams. But on the other hand the top programs (like UK, Duke, Kansas etc.) are now able to recruit the best players from all around the country. So while there may be more emphasis overall, I don't necessarily think it's any harder (for the top programs at least) given the advantage in talent that they enjoy.
You mention UCLA, that may be a good example where the recruiting landscape started to change and UCLA was out ahead of everyone else. UCLA was getting top players out of Philadelphia and New York (Lew Alcindor) to go along with their West Coast recruits while most other programs were still recruiting regionally. So yes they did have a great advantage during that time period, and obviously made great use of it. But I don't know that it proves your point.
This post was edited on 1/26 3:51 PM by JPScott
So, would UNC*** also be an example of a program that was recruiting outside their region with the NY connection?
They were, but I didn't mention them because they were primarily targeting a specific part of the country (greater NY Metro area) so in a way it was somewhat unique, whereas UCLA was recruiting nationally.
There are some other examples of targeted recruiting outside your natural region, such as Johnny Dee of Alabama recruiting the "Rocket 8" from Indiana and being successful with that group in the mid-1950s. Similarly Everett Case of N.C. State doing the same in the 1940s.
You comment and the similar sentiment of the OP have a grain of truth but are missing an important point. It's true that teams now play MANY more games each season than they did back in Rupp's era. However, there are MANY MANY more good teams now than there were in that era. It's almost definitely much harder to win at the same percentage now as it was back then.
Could Rupp have won 82.2% of his games if he played today? Who knows... Maybe, but I doubt it. Mark Few has won over 80% playing at Gonzaga in a terrible conference. That team plays about 3 or 4 good opponents each year (including the NCAA tourney) and they average about 6 or 7 losses a year. UK plays a LOT more good opponents each year, but it's also a lot better program. Maybe Rupp could keep his number that high. Maybe not.
Roy Williams has won about 80% of his games as well, but that number has gone way down since he's been in the ACC. The recent SEC is a lot tougher conference than the Big 12 of the early 90s.
Calipari has won 77.7% of his games all time but did it with teams in bad conferences for much of his career. He's almost exactly matched Rupp and won 82% while at UK, but in that brief span he's had 3 of the best UK teams EVER (2010, 2012, 2015) in just 6 seasons AND he took two OTHER teams to the Final Four. That's what it took to to just equal Rupp!!! Could Rupp have done the same thing in today's era? I'm not saying no, but it's hard to imagine that he could do it.
Switch the schools and dozens of you would have K-r-z-y-z-e-w-s-k-i across your knuckles. Just like Wooden is clearly a cheat, Coach K is clearly a whiner/flopper/NCAA darling/whatever and yet Rupp is unfairly labeled a racist. It's all fan bias and perspective when you try and compare eras and elite coaches, players, etc.
It's undoubtedly true that we're the ultimate scoreboard pointers until the scoreboard doesn't favor us though. Then we have a million really long, important reasons why it doesn't. The reason for that is because the scoreboard favors us a lot more often than it does anyone else, however. We aren't really different or special in that biased regard, we're just in bigger numbers and have more favorable statistics.
Personally, I'm not one to try and discredit greatness. If it makes you feel better to slot Krzyzewski fourth or fifth or wherever, go for it.
It's undoubtedly true that we're the ultimate scoreboard pointers until the scoreboard doesn't favor us though. Then we have a million really long, important reasons why it doesn't. The reason for that is because the scoreboard favors us a lot more often than it does anyone else, however. We aren't really different or special in that biased regard, we're just in bigger numbers and have more favorable statistics.
Personally, I'm not one to try and discredit greatness. If it makes you feel better to slot Krzyzewski fourth or fifth or wherever, go for it.
He got Alcindor by convincing him to move across the country. Which was made relatively easy by a lot of factors:
1- There really were no major eastern college programs in 1965, when Alcindor was choosing a school (St. John's was the closest to that, and Alcindor considered them). After the point-shaving scandal of the early 50's, it became common for the best NYC talent to migrate out of the area to play in college- a trend that lasted long after Lew Alcindor became Kareem, well into the 70's (see Bernard King going to Tennessee, his brother going to Maryland, as a couple of the numerous examples).
2- UCLA had just won consecutive national titles.
3- John Wooden as a coach had a great record of recruiting black players, and UCLA as a school had a tremendous history with black athletes- Jackie Robinson, Willie Naulls (who played for Wooden at UCLA, then for the Knicks while Alcindor was growing up in NYC), Arthur Ashe.
If you look at the college basketball landscape of 1965, it makes perfect sense that one of the all-time great HS players, who happened to be a 7'2" black man, would go play basketball at UCLA. No northeastern college powers, at least not on a large scale. ACC? Segregated. SEC? Segregated. Big 8? Long way to travel, mostly segregated, and at that time, known for a boring style heavily influenced by Hank Iba. Big 10- not segregated, but a number of schools were clearly playing a quota game on race. The one that wasn't, and was a national force at the time-Michigan- probably came in second to UCLA in the Alcindor recruitment.
Rupp did it before it was ever done. He's the pioneer. Rat face is no doubt a great coach but he has had lots of great coaches to rely on and change his philosophy and grow. Rupp did it before the great coaches
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