Kentucky Basketball: Ranking the 7 Coaches from Adolph Rupp to John Calipari
The University of Kentucky Wildcats have been one of the premier programs in all of college basketball for nearly all of their 100-plus years of playing the game. Somewhat surprisingly, however, there have only been seven coaches to lead the program since 1930.
Four of those coaches led Kentucky to national titles, a couple helped to tarnish a legacy and one nearly killed the program. But they all left their mark and helped shape the Kentucky program as we know it today, and all have been seared into the minds of Kentucky fans everywhere.
So how do they stack up against each other? Who would be on the Mount Rushmore of Kentucky coaches, and who would fans love to forget if possible?
Here are the seven coaches that have taken charge of the Wildcats since that glorious year when the Baron first came to the bluegrass, ranked from the worst coach to the best in Kentucky history.
Eddie Sutton
1 of 7
He once famously said he would crawl to Lexington to have the Kentucky job. By the end of his tenure, most Kentucky fans would be left hoping that he had just crawled into a hole instead.
Prior to Kentucky, Sutton had been a very successful coach at Arkansas, where he took that school to the 1978 Final Four. However, while his tenure at Kentucky seemed to have the same promise, things quickly spiraled out of control.
After an Elite Eight appearance in 1986 and an SEC title in 1988, controversy hit in Lexington, and the NCAA came calling on the Kentucky program. During his scandal-plagued final year, Sutton's team limped to the finish line with a 13-19 record.
When the investigation was done, Sutton's staff was found to have paid players and to have helped some players cheat on entrance exams. Sutton was forced to resign, and the program was placed on probation and banned from television for the 1989-1990 season.
Billy Gillispie
2 of 7
Some guys are made for the Kentucky job, which requires a certain love of the spotlight and a politician's flair. Some, like Billy Gillispie, could never hope to stand a chance.
Gillispie arrived in Lexington to much fanfare after the slow and painful decline of the program under Tubby Smith. He was touted as an ace recruiter and an excellent in-game coach and was coming off some great seasons at Texas A&M.
But Gillispie was quickly exposed as someone not quite ready for a prime-time job with rumors of alcohol issues and womanizing running rampant across town (though these were never confirmed). When the team failed to perform under his guidance, the situation really became untenable.
Players were allegedly berated, banished from the team on a regular basis and threatened repeatedly under an ever stressed out Gillispie. As the stories got worse off the court, the play on the court suffered as well. In his last year at Kentucky, the Wildcats missed the NCAA tournament for the first time since the probation years.
Orlando "Tubby" Smith
3 of 7
That's Tubby talking to Michael Porter, who was actually playing in a game. That in a nutshell was the biggest problem with Tubby Smith at Kentucky. Too many guys like Michael Porter saw way too many minutes of game action.
True, he did win a national title, so it's hard to fathom that he wouldn't at least be the fourth-best UK coach, but count me among those that think many coaches could have won with that team that was still chock-full of Rick Pitino's players that had already played in two championship games.
While winning it all was still a huge accomplishment, the rest of Tubby's tenure was painful to watch for most of the time.
From 1998 until last season, Kentucky would not make another Final Four due largely to Coach Smith's inability to recruit amongst the nation's elite. When he did get one of his rare strong classes, he often misused talent or didn't get those guys to play to their potential (Rajon Rondo).
Tubby was a classy guy, but under his watch Kentucky went from a Final Four regular at the end of the Pitino era to a team that struggled to win in the SEC and was perfectly comfortable to have No. 8 seeds in the NCAAs. It is the trajectory of the program that Tubby created that puts him behind the next guy on the list, even though Tubby has a title and John Calipari doesn't...yet.
John Calipari
4 of 7
This is more than likely a temporary spot. If I write this same article in three or four more years, my guess is that Calipari will have shot up this list, and truth be told, I considered moving him higher already. But not yet, not this soon.
However, this is still pretty good placement considering that Calipari is above a title-winning coach in Tubby Smith. It is well deserved too.
Calipari came to Kentucky after two coaching tenures that had denigrated the Kentucky name. After winning his title in 1998, Coach Smith oversaw a decline in the program from the best team in the country to a perennial also-ran. After Smith's run was over, Billy Gillispie nearly ran the program into the ground, completing what many saw as Smith's destiny before he fled to Minnesota (relegation to the NIT).
In just two seasons Calipari has turned the ship completely around. In his first year Calipari brought the excitement back to Kentucky basketball and took a talented freshman-laden team all the way to the Elite Eight. Last year, in his second season, he already had Kentucky back in the Final Four.
Now, with another top recruiting class in town and the most experienced team he will have had in Lexington, Calipari has his sights set on his first, and Kentucky's eighth, national title.
Joe B. Hall
5 of 7
Hall had the unenviable task of following the legend, Adolph Rupp, in the head coaching position at Kentucky. He probably did as good of a job of following a legend of that magnitude as anyone else in the history of sports has ever done.
In his 13 seasons at the helm, Hall, a Cynthiana, KY native, went a very respectable 297-100 at Kentucky. Though his career got off to a somewhat rocky start with a 13-13 record in his second season, Hall quickly had Kentucky back on top in no time.
Starting in 1975, Hall had a 10-year run where Kentucky went to three Final Fours, including winning it all in the 1978 season. Hall also had three Elite Eight runs mixed in.
While it doesn't mean anything for his coaching, you have to give Hall a little bit of extra credit for this fun fact: Hall is one of only three men to win an NCAA title as both a player and a coach, joining Bob Knight and Dean Smith—and he is the only man to do it at the same school.
Rick Pitino
6 of 7
Rick Pitino came to Kentucky at a very difficult time with the program being placed on probation after the disastrous Eddie Sutton fiasco. What he did in his time in Lexington was nothing short of miraculous.
In eight seasons following the NCAA hammering the Wildcats, Pitino compiled a mind-boggling 219-50 record as Kentucky's coach. That includes a difficult first year in which Kentucky went 14-14.
In his last six seasons at Kentucky, Pitino took the Wildcats to two Elite Eights, three Final Fours and one championship in 1996 with possibly the best team to ever take the floor in college basketball. In the first year after he left Kentucky, a team consisting of almost all of his players won another title under Tubby Smith in 1998.
If he had stayed at Kentucky, most Kentucky fans think he would have at least won a couple more titles as well and might have gone down as one of the greatest coaches in history. But he didn't, so he will have to settle for being the second best ever coach at Kentucky.
Who is the best? Well, the guy who largely started it all, of course.
Adolph Rupp
7 of 7
Affectionately known as the Baron of the Bluegrass, Adolph Rupp was not only the most successful coach in Kentucky history, he was also the driving force behind the culture of winning that has been a part of the program since 1930.
In 41 seasons leading Kentucky, Rupp went an astounding 876-190. At the time of his retirement he had the most wins in NCAA history (he is now fourth) and an incredible 82.2 percent winning percentage.
He took Kentucky to six Final Fours in his career and guided Kentucky to four national championships during his tenure. Rupp also won a gold medal as a coach for the United States in the 1948 Olympics and was a four-time national coach of the year.
Rupp is probably most beloved, however, for the style of basketball he coached, which fans in the Commonwealth still demand from their teams. He was a fierce man-to-man defense advocate and was largely credited with being the father of the fast break. Rupp loved for his teams to run the other team into the ground, and that mentality is still with Kentucky fans to this day.
For all of his winning and how he shaped the culture of Kentucky basketball, it really is impossible to say anyone other than Rupp is the best coach in Kentucky history.
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