If you guys already know this, forgive me for posting it. The coach before Rupp was the most successful UK coach to that point. John Mauer coached a methodical slow brand of ball he called submarine ball. When UK refused him a raise, he went to Tenn. Rupp was a high school coach in Illinois. To get the Illinois job he had to also coach wrestling. He had never been involved with wrestling, but he bought a book and won a state championship. He also coached black players there.
He got the UK job by promoting the use of a new-fangled thing called a fast break. He told the hiring committee he was the best dam coach in the country. He had talked with some of the players about the new style and they approved.
Later Rupp became good friends with Red Auerbach and Red Holzman (two of the best early pro coaches) and discussed basketball strategy frequently with both. Getting his players in front of pro eyes is the reason he was one of the first to start playing a national schedule when others were playing regionally.
Most of this from The Rupp Years by Tev Laudeman.
The Freeport Pretzels is who he coached up in Illinois. That's how I knew the name before I moved here. It's also why I didn't understand people calling him racist.
On the HS level (at least in Illinois) if you didn't want a type on a team, they weren't on a team and no one said a thing. Don't like long hair, cut em. Don't like smokers, cut em. Don't like whites/blacks, cut em from your team. Don't like troublemakers or showboats cut em. Tryouts were just that. If a coach didn't like you, you could try, but you were out when it mattered.
I didn't get along with our HS basketball/baseball coach. Last season I played baseball I didn't get put out or struck out through 9 straight games and finished the season somewhere over .900, finished the last 2 seasons at 1st base on the city all-star team, no errors, but he wouldn't let me on the HS team. And that wasn't the 50s
I was the only one who knew he was going to cut me from both teams no matter what. I made him regret it, too. Destroyed his starters in tryouts. Everyone was asking him why he cut me and it pissed him off every time. Never answered anyone.*
So if Rupp didn't want black players on his Freeport team, all he had to do was say they weren't on the team. The fact was they WERE on his team. I still think the "racist" label was given to him by racists who didn't want the SEC integrated and by other schools that didn't want to lose recruits to him. No other reasons.
"Learned to shoot 3s over the summer before my senior yr just so I could rub it at the tryouts. Made 3 3s in a row and 5-6 in one of the games he was running the 2nd day. We crushed most of the first string. Good friend on the team who taught me to catch and shoot coming out of a screen, when the school's best 3pt shooter got hurt, he reminded the coach that I was eligible and could really shoot 3s well. Pointed at me in the stands. It was awesome lol
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