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Denny Crum, who received two N.C.A.A. males’s basketball championships and constructed the College of Louisville into one of many dominant applications of the Eighties throughout a protracted Corridor of Fame teaching profession, died on Tuesday at his dwelling in Louisville, Ky. He was 86.
The college introduced his demise after being knowledgeable by his spouse, Susan. No trigger was given. Crum had a gentle stroke in August 2017 whereas fishing in Alaska and one other two years two in the past.
Nicknamed Cool Hand Luke due to his unflinching sideline demeanor, Crum retired in March 2001 after 30 seasons at Louisville with a document of 675-295 and championships in 1980 and 1986.
A former assistant beneath the famend U.C.L.A. coach John Picket, Crum typically wore a pink blazer and waved a rolled-up stat sheet like a bandleader’s baton as he directed Louisville to 23 N.C.A.A. tournaments and 6 Last Fours. He was voted school coach of the yr 3 times.
He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in Might 1994, with Picket, his school coach at U.C.L.A. and longtime mentor, at his facet. Crum completed with 11 extra wins than Picket had amassed at U.C.L.A. and was inducted into the Nationwide Collegiate Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2006.
Denzel Edwin Crum was born on March 2, 1937, in San Fernando, Calif. He performed guard for 2 seasons at Pierce Junior Faculty in Los Angeles earlier than transferring to U.C.L.A. in 1956.
The Bruins went 38-14 in Crum’s two seasons as a participant. He briefly served as a graduate assistant to Picket earlier than teaching Pierce within the mid-Nineteen Sixties.
Picket employed Crum as his assistant and chief recruiter in 1968, when the Bruins have been within the midst of their dynastic run to 10 N.C.A.A. championships. Crum is credited with luring the long run Corridor of Famer Invoice Walton to U.C.L.A., and the Bruins went 86-4 and received three N.C.A.A. titles throughout Crum’s three seasons there.
He succeeded John Dromo as Louisville’s coach in April 1971.
Till then, Louisville had loved little postseason success, reaching solely the 1956 N.I.T. championship and the 1959 N.C.A.A. Last 4. The Cardinals misplaced Crum’s first recreation, 70-69, to Florida however then reeled off 15 consecutive victories.
“Denny was so good that I knew I wasn’t going to maintain him very lengthy,” Picket as soon as instructed The Courier Journal of Louisville. “I used to be happy when he obtained the job at Louisville. I had at all times hoped after I retired that he’d be the one to succeed me, however he left and proved to be simply what I believed he was.”
Crum’s Cardinals received the Missouri Valley Convention — the primary of his 15 regular-season league titles — after which reached the Last 4, the place they met Picket’s Bruins. On the time, Crum was the third coach to guide his staff to the Last 4 in his first season. However the Bruins received, 96-77, on their option to a sixth straight championship.
The faculties met once more within the semifinals three seasons later with an identical end result: U.C.L.A. received, 75-74, in time beyond regulation. By then Crum had employed a lot of Picket’s basically centered type, however with strain protection and a fast-breaking aptitude. As a substitute of an offense constructed round a dominant middle, Crum used athletic guards and forwards who might end performs with the high-flying dunks Picket eschewed.
Crum’s philosophy helped make the Cardinals perennial N.C.A.A. event members, with 20 or extra wins every season from 1975 by 1979. Louisville’s breakthrough got here within the 1979-80 season, when the homegrown star guard Darrell Griffith and the so-called Medical doctors of Dunk marched by the common season, 26-3, and received their second Metro Convention championship in three years.
Crum’s second-seeded Cardinals reached their third Last 4 in 9 seasons, solely to run up in opposition to U.C.L.A. once more, this time coached by Larry Brown. Louisville lastly prevailed, with a 59-54 championship-game win in Indianapolis led by the high-flying all-American Griffith.
Crum’s second title adopted in 1986, when Louisville beat Duke, 72-69.
The second half of his tenure was not almost as profitable as the primary. Louisville endured two separate N.C.A.A. investigations and by no means once more returned to the Last 4 beneath his watch.
After his retirement, Crum was a co-host with Joe B. Corridor, the longtime Kentucky males’s basketball coach, of a sports activities radio program heard in Kentucky. Corridor died final yr at 93.
Crum remained a revered presence round Louisville. He regularly attended Cardinals video games on the KFC Yum! Middle dwelling court docket bearing his title. He was current for the September 2022 dedication of Denny Crum Corridor, a brand new campus dormitory for athletes and college students. And he had a front-row seat in March 2022 for the introduction of considered one of his former gamers, Kenny Payne, because the Cardinals’ coach.
Full data on Crum’s survivors was not instantly obtainable.
The New York Occasions contributed reporting.
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