Denny Crum dies

[64NIT]

Denny Crum coached Louisville during the last few years of their MVC membership in the early 1970s. He was part of the John Wooden coaching tree:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/legendary-louisville-basketball-coach-denny-crum-dead

[Da Coach]

Denny Crum coached Louisville during the last few years of their MVC membership in the early 1970s. He was part of the John Wooden coaching tree:

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/legen...enny-crum-dead

Thanks for posting.
RIP Denny Crum. He could get real angry sometimes (usually at officials), but he was known as a gentleman who was respected by virtually everyone. He coached Louisville for 31 seasons (1971-2001), and only had 3 seasons with a losing record. In his 31 years as head coach at Louisville, his teams made the NCAA Tournament 23 times. He had a career record of 675-295 (.696) at Louisville, and won 2 NCAA Tournament Championships (1980 and 1986). Older Bradley fans will recall his 1986 national championship team eliminating Bradley in the 2nd round in Ogden, Utah.
Career record- https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb...ny-crum-1.html

In addition to his career at Louisville for 3 decades, he was John Wooden's top assistant coach and chief recruiter at UCLA from 1967-1971. UCLA won the National Championship all 4 years he was there.
Bio- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denny_Crum

[houstonbrave]

DC-Ouch. I’m not that old but as a kid I remember Denny bringing Louisville teams into Robertson as a member of the Valley with players like Junior Bridgeman. lord the Valley was really hard in those days and the NCAA tournament only expanded to 32 teams in 1975-before that 16 and the valley included Louisville and other monster programs.

Note-I was just a kid then.

[PhiAlphaBoy]

DC-Ouch. I’m not that old but as a kid I remember Denny bringing Louisville teams into Robertson as a member of the Valley with players like Junior Bridgeman. lord the Valley was really hard in those days and the NCAA tournament only expanded to 32 teams in 1975-before that 16 and the valley included Louisville and other monster programs.

Note-I was just a kid then.

I also went to those Bradley/Louisville games as a kid in the early to mid-70s and, even though Bradley and Coach Stowell were almost always undermanned, they always played Louisville close and even beat them in RMFH a few times. Denny Crum was one of the all-time greats and should be remembered as such.

[64NIT]

From the wikipedia.com link in DC's post above:

Crum was widely credited with pioneering the now-common strategy of scheduling tough non-conference match-ups early in the season in order to prepare his teams for March's NCAA tournament

Common? I seem to see Power 5 teams' schedules loaded with cupcakes and buy games. What am I missing?

[Stryker]

From the wikipedia.com link in DC's post above:

Common? I seem to see Power 5 teams' schedules loaded with cupcakes and buy games. What am I missing?

Depends on the team. Michigan State and others always seem to load up a tough non-conference schedule in Nov and early Dec etc. IMO it's only some of th elite P5 teams that do this, most of them just do cupcakes all year.

[yoda]

I also went to those Bradley/Louisville games as a kid in the early to mid-70s and, even though Bradley and Coach Stowell were almost always undermanned, they always played Louisville close and even beat them in RMFH a few times. Denny Crum was one of the all-time greats and should be remembered as such.

I was transferred from Peoria (and had to give up watching the Braves in the Fieldhouse for a few years)
and lived in Louisville for those years (1975-'80) before moving back to Peoria. But in that interval,
I was a season ticketholder for Louisville basketball. Those years were their absolute prime- played in
their old Freedom Hall - seating capacity almost 20K -- under Denny Crum, including winning
the National Championship in 1980 with Darrell Griffith, Rodney & Scooter McCray, Jerry Eaves, Derek Smith,
Roger Burkman & Wiley Brown, who, like Marcus Pollard, played in the NFL as well as playing several years of pro basketball -
all despite only having a partially disabled right hand, missing part of his thumb - and... BTW - he also "invented" "The High Five" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bq68isnVLIs

(also, Bradley was in the same bracket as Louisville in 1980, but didn't get past Texas A&M)