Who is john wooden coach

After two years, he returned to the state of Indiana where he coached basketball, baseball and tennis at South Bend Central High School and taught English for nine years. His impressive year prep coaching record was World War II interrupted his coaching career as he served as a full lieutenant in the U. Navy from Following his discharge in , he went to Indiana Teachers College now Indiana State University as athletic director, basketball and baseball coach for two seasons prior to moving to UCLA.

Wooden and his wife, Nell, who died in Los Angeles on March 21, , were married for 53 years. Parents of a son, James Hugh, and a daughter, Nancy Anne, Coach Wooden had seven grandchildren and 13 great-grandchildren. On Dec. The use of software that blocks ads hinders our ability to serve you the content you came here to enjoy.

We ask that you consider turning off your ad blocker so we can deliver you the best experience possible while you are here. Totals Totals 47 Young, Jr. First sports figure to be honored following such figures as Mother Teresa and Walter Cronkite.

He graduated with honors and a degree in English after winning the College Basketball Player of the Year Award and Purdue was voted national champions in In his first year, the basketball team went ; it would be the only losing season of his coaching career. During this time, he formulated the principles of his seminal "Pyramid of Success," teaching model, aiming to inspire his students and teams to derive the most from their potential.

After serving as a Navy lieutenant during World War II, Wooden became the athletic director, as well as the coach for the basketball and baseball teams at Indiana State Teachers College in His basketball teams won back-to-back Indiana Collegiate Conference titles and notched an impressive record over two seasons. Wooden took over as basketball coach for the University of California, Los Angeles, in , hardly a sought after position given that the team lacked a proper playing arena and facilities.

But the former college champion instilled some much-needed discipline into his players, forbidding them from cursing and criticizing each other, and UCLA won three Pacific Coast Conference titles in his first eight seasons. Wooden was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a player in , but his impact on the game was far from finished.

He led UCLA to a perfect record and the national championship in —which earned him Coach of the Year honors—and then oversaw a second championship the following season. Beginning in the season, the Bruins embarked on the most dominant run in college basketball history.

They won seven straight championships with Lew Alcindor—later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar—and then Bill Walton anchoring the center position, gaining three undefeated seasons along the way.

Wooden was inducted to the Basketball Hall of Fame again in for his remarkable coaching accomplishments, making him the first person to be honored as a player and coach. For another who had more natural ability but did not work as hard, a B should be deemed less than satisfactory. Wooden was a lover of the English language himself, not to mention a burgeoning amateur poet. That remains an all-time record that is likely never to be broken. He wanted them to focus on process, not results. He thought their emotions should remain on an even keel, so he kept his pregame locker room speeches short, to the point, and mundane.

He never provided them with detailed scouting reports on their opponents. He rarely called time outs. As their coach—their teacher—he believed his work was mostly done during practices. The games would be their final exams. Smith was an innovator on the court and off it. He is the father of modern basketball analytics, and was even a proponent of the shot clock despite his reputation with the four-corners offense. Off the court, he fought for racial equality in North Carolina and across the country.

Olympics basketball teams, Iba won games and two national championships during his year college coaching career. The amoeba defense is a gambling zone that he employed as an off-look from his standard man-to-man defense, and it disrupted offenses.

Tarkanian was also an innovator off the court; he was never afraid to point out the hypocrisy of the NCAA. History is slowly vindicating his rebel reputation. Although Sam Barry is credited with inventing the triangle offense, Winter perfected it as an assistant at Kansas State. He quite literally wrote the book on the scheme, called The Triple-Post Offense. Knight developed his famous motion offense after watching Princeton run its offense while he was a coach at West Point.

The motion offense revolves around spacing and emphasizes screening, slashing and passing over shooting three-pointers. The elements of this offense are still seen throughout the sport. After the three-point line was adapted in , Pitino became its champion. Newell achieved most of his basketball success at the end of his career, winning a national championship at Cal in and then coaching the gold medal-winning U.