catmandoo
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posted 04-06-2020 08:44 PM
Eddie Sutton resigned as the University of Kentucky’s basketball coach as an alternative to being fired. Swathed in scandal so severe that the NCAA pondered imposing its “death penalty,” Sutton’s UK tenure ended with the school’s first losing season since 1927 and was followed by three years of probation.
That Sutton could overcome all that to earn enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and this after six failed attempts as a finalist, is a reminder that a man is more fairly judged by his body of work than by when he hits bottom.
It does not explain voters’ sustained snub of Joe B. Hall, however.
Among college coaches who have won a Division I title and are no longer active, Hall is the only one who won more than 70% of his games. He reached three Final Fours in his 13 seasons at Kentucky, winning the NCAA title in 1978 and compiling an overall record of 297-100 (.748). He earned induction in the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2012.
Yet at age 91, Hall has yet to qualify even once as a finalist for the older and more prestigious Naismith Hall. According to Naismith historian Matt Zeysing, “It has been a number of years” since Hall was even nominated.
“When Eddie Sutton got in, I’m like, ‘Why isn’t Coach Hall in?’" Hall of Fame UK coach John Calipari said Monday afternoon. “No disrespect to Eddie; I’m happy he got in. Matter of fact, I thought he deserved it. But what Coach Hall did here — you have to look back to that time and that era and he walked in after Coach (Adolph) Rupp. Whoever followed a Coach (John) Wooden, a Bobby Knight, a Coach Rupp, a Dean Smith and had that kind of success?
Whoever followed a living legend and survived it? And not only survived it, thrived?”
Nearly half a century since he replaced Rupp, Hall seems still entangled in the coattails of the Baron of the Bluegrass, a victim not of his own success but of the man he succeeded.
“It’s a big albatross around his neck,” said Oscar Combs, founder of the Cats’ Pause.
Hall undoubtedly benefited from the base Rupp built, but the same could be said of any college coach hired by an established power in any sport. What Nick Saban has achieved with Alabama football, for instance, is at least in part the product of foundation work performed by Paul “Bear” Bryant.
“If I have seen further,” quoth Isaac Newton, “it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
That Kentucky has won NCAA basketball titles under five different coaches — Rupp, Hall, Rick Pitino, Tubby Smith and Calipari — is a testament to its traditions, its resources and the rabidity of its fan base. If that context detracts from voters’ view of Hall’s career — if he is seen as another interchangeable cog in a Big Blue machine — his prolonged apprenticeship as Rupp’s assistant and his early retirement at age 56 left a relatively lean body of work.
Hall coached at Regis University and Central Missouri State before joining Rupp’s staff in 1965, but UK was his only prominent post. By contrast, Sutton, Pitino and Calipari all reached the Final Four before landing the UK job, and Sutton and Pitino would both return to the Final Four after leaving Lexington. Presumably, the coach who can make a mark at multiple stops is more likely to leave a lasting impression.
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