Eddie Sutton to be Inducted NCAA Hall of Fame

By: LONNY DEMAREE

After the legendary Joe B. Hall retired from being the head basketball coach at UK, after a few gyrations Eddie Sutton landed at UK as the head coach.

A much deserved Eddie Sutton will be inducted into the NCAA Hall of Fame. He had some very good moments at UK but his Arkansas teams supplied some exhilarating moments for the partiant UK fans.

Some of those moments came when he was coaching three All-Americans Sidney Moncrief, Marvin Delph, and Ron Brewer all on the same team. Joe Hall's 1978 National Championship defeated that team to get to the Final Four.

Sutton's 1981 Took down the defending 1980 National Championship U of L team when U.S. Reed sank a half-court shot to knock them out of the NCAA run to repeat.

Yours truly made numerous trips together covering UK sports and had several conversations about his one year under Sutton. He had glowing things to say about the coach and his coaching savvy. Cameron Mills talked about Sutton's instinctual ability to pull the right strings. Walker in glowing terms talked of how he and his point guard Roger Hardin's cohesive efforts playing off each other. He said his one year under Sutton gave them the freedom to improvise which is a star players dream.

Every great coach has their strength's and weaknesses, mostly strengths. During my time Sutton had the uncanny ability to score coming out of timeouts. Tubby Smith has those same abilities.

Joe Hall was noted for his ability to handle big men. John Calipari has a combination of all those strengths and before coronavirus was on track to hang another banner in Rupp Arena.

Sutton was voted coach of the year in three different decades. Durings Sutton's and Nolan Richardson's tenure at Arkansas were some of the best times covering the SEC Tournament because of the following UK and Arkansas had.

A lot of UK and Arkansas history is connected with Sutton. The one thing that's goes by the board is Richardson's basketball exploits - the only coach to win championship on all three levels junior college, NAIA, and Dl NCAA.

So strong kudos to Eddie Stutton a great basketball coach.