Wooden, John (1910-2010), was one of the greatest coaches in college basketball history. He coached the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) to 10 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) championships from 1964 to 1975. In that period, his teams won 335 games and lost 22. His teams won a record seven straight NCAA championships from 1967 to 1973. From 1971 to 1974, UCLA won 88 consecutive games, a record for men’s college basketball. He coached many all-Americans, including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Gail Goodrich, Bill Walton, and Sidney Wicks.
John Robert Wooden was born on Oct. 14, 1910, in Martinsville, Indiana, and graduated from Purdue University. He won all-America honors as a guard on the Purdue basketball team in 1930, 1931, and 1932. Wooden was basketball coach at UCLA from 1948 to 1975. He was the first man elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach. Wooden wrote a memoir about his personal life and coaching career called My Personal Best (2004). Wooden died on June 4, 2010, at the age of 99.
