This week I have been looking back at the unmatched history and tradition of our beloved Wildcats, so I put together a 2 part summery of the legendary Baron of the Bluegrass, some of you may not be history buffs but all UK fans should learn about our past as well as looking forward to the future. This is Part one covering the early years of the Baron. a lot of this info was taken from Wikipedia and Jon Scotts page at UKAthletics.com.

Adolph Frederick Rupp (September 2, 1901–December 10, 1977) was one of the most successful coaches in the history of American college basketball. Rupp ranks third (behind Bob Knight and Dean Smith), in total victories by a men’s NCAA Division Icollege coach, winning 876 games in 41 years of coaching. He set a remarkable standard of excellence at Kentucky that exists to this day. Rupp is also second among all coaches in all-time winning percentage (.822), trailing only Clair Bee. Adolph F. Rupp was enshrined in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame on April 13, 1969.

Rupp was born outside Halstead, Kansas, to Mennonite German immigrants, the fourth of six children. He grew up on a 173-acre (0.70 km²) farm which his father Heinrich homesteaded. After his father’s death in 1910, Rupp’s oldest brother Otto took over farming responsibilities. As a youngster, Rupp worked on the farm and attended a school in a one-room school house in the country. He first became interested in the sport of basketball at the age of six when Halstead won the first of two consecutive Kansas state high school titles. According to interviews, he and his brothers stuffed rags into a gunnysack which his mother sewed up to use as a basketball on the family farm. Later, after growing to a sturdy 6-foot-2, Rupp was a star on his Halstead High Schoolteam, averaging over 19 points a game in both his junior and senior years. Rupp also served as team captain and unofficial coach.

After high school, Rupp attended the University of Kansasfrom 1919–1923. He worked part-time at the student Jayhawk Cafe to help pay his college expenses. He was a reserve on the basketball team under legendary coach Forrest “Phog” Allen from 1919 to 1923. Assisting Allen during that time was his former coach and inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, who Rupp also got to know well during his time in Lawrence.

In Rupp’s junior and senior college seasons (1921–22 and 1922–23), Kansas (KU) had outstanding basketball squads. Later, both of these standout Kansas teams would be awarded the Helms National Championship, recognizing the Jayhawks as the top team in the nation during those seasons.

When Adolph Rupp arrived in Lexington in the spring of 1930, no one suspected the greatness that would soon follow, he was just another coach in a long line of failures, who most thought would last just a season or two like all the coaches who proceeded him. It did not take Rupp long to prove all the doubters wrong, and 41 years later many considered him the greatest basketball coach of all time, and the visionary who brought about the modern age of the sport.

Part 2 the Kentucky Legacy will be out soon.