record of 83 victories against 17 defeats in major tournament competition over the past 21 years, including participation in 18 national classics. The Bluegrass cagers in 1949 became the first team in the history of the Naismith sport to win two NCAA and one National Invitation crowns and last season made their record more secure by adding a third NCAA crown.
Coach Rupp and his "Fabulous Five" (Groza, Beard, Barker, Jones, and Rollins) represented the United States as a unit on the American basketball entry at the 1948 Olympic Games in London.
Not to be outshone by the highly-publicized cage powerhouses he has developed at Kentucky, Baron Rupp personally has scaled the pinnacles of basketball fame and won deserved recognition in his own right.
For the re-building job he accomplished on the sophomore-studded 1949-50 Wildcats (25-5), weakened beyond repair (everyone thought) by the loss of four great stars, the New York Basketball Writers Association named Rupp "Coach of the Year." In 1944, he won the highest individual coaching honor in the basketball worldelection to the basketball Hall of Fame sponsored by Helms Foundation. Rupp was the tenth coach in the history of the sport to be so honored by the quasi-official California organization, which in 1949 selected him as "Coach of the Year" for the second season in a row and in 1951 designated the Wildcats as national champions for the fourth timean honor given no other collegiate quintet.
Kentucky Colonel Rupp also has achieved a host of equal and lesser honors during his career. He is the author of a best-seller, "Championship Basketball," which is already being translated into foreign languages. During the past season, he was made an honorary citizen of New Orleans and received the first plaque of appreciation ever awarded by the Sugar Bowl committee. He was honored in 1949 as the outstanding citizen of the University city of Lexington and holds the high office of Potentate in the Oleika Temple of the Shrine. In 1945, Rupp was named to the Kentucky Hall of Fame as the second man to be so honored in the history of the state.