Besides the distinction of an even 100 victories against only 21 defeats covering action in 21 national classics (NCAA, NIT, UK Invitational and Sugar Bowl Tournaments) plus 21 conference meets and the '48 Olympics, Rupp has guided his Wildcat teams to national championships in the Associated Press Poll four times in the last six years and produced no less than 24 All-Americans.
Furthermore, the UK mentor goes into the current season in possession of another record that no other coach or school comes even close to threatening124 consecutive wins on the home floor. No Rupp-coached Kentucky team has been beaten at home since Ohio State turned the trick on Jan. 2, 1943approximately 12 years ago.
The colorful Rupp is credited in most quarters with doing more than any other modern tutor to make basketball a national spectator sport. From the very outset of his career at Kentucky, which began in 1930, he has introduced or popularized many new and revised trends in the game that have aided materially in making the country basketball-minded. One such innovation was the controlled fast break offensive pattern which has since become the crowd-pleasing trademark of Wildcat cage teams.
Rupp has become, without a doubt, the best known and most widely quoted cage coach in America and his personal fame is equalled only by the success he has instilled in the highly-publicized Kentucky basketball powerhouses.
The Kentucky Colonel was named to the Commonwealth's Hall of Fame in 1945 and, in 1949, was honored as the outstanding citizen of the University city of Lexington. Active in civic affairs, he is a Past Potentate of the Oleika Temple of the Shrine and currently is a member of the board of directors of the Shriners Hospital for Crippled Children. He was selected as one of the 10 outstanding Shriners of the nation in 1950 and holds honorary memberships in various temples of the order throughout the country.
Recognized internationally in registered Hereford breeding circles, Rupp has four farms near Lexington on which he maintains white-faced Hereford herds and raises fine burley tobacco. He is now in a second term as president of the Kentucky Hereford Association and serves on the board of directors of the Kentucky Hereford Breeders Assn. and the Bourbon Beef Show. The coach also is a director of the Central District Warehousing Corporation, world's largest tobacco marketing organization, and sits on the board directing activities of the Blue Grass Festival and Blue Grass Foundation.
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