Wooden, John

Wooden, John,

1910–2010, American basketball coach, b. Martinsville, Ind. He was the first athlete to be honored in the basketball Hall of Fame as both player and coach. An All-American guard at Purdue Univ, he was named Player of the Year in 1932. He turned down offers to coach pro basketball and went on to coach the Univ. of California at Los Angeles to 10 national championships in 12 years (1964–65, 1967–73, and 1975), with a men's Division I record 88-game winning streak from Jan., 1971, to Jan., 1974. During his coaching career at UCLA (1948–75), his teams won 664 games for the fourth all-time highest winning percentage (.804).

Bibliography

See biography by S. Davis (2014).

Wooden, John (Robert)

(1910– ) basketball coach; born in Martinsville, Ind. He was a three-time All-American guard on Purdue University's basketball teams (1930–32). During his career as coach at the University of California: Los Angeles (1948–75), his teams won a record ten National Collegiate Athletic Association championships, seven of them consecutively (1967–73). He is a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, and in 1977 an annual award was established in his name to honor the outstanding college basketball player-student of the year.