College Basketball, Basketball Players & Coaches - Biography, Basketball - Coaching & Instruction, College Athletics - General & Miscellaneous

They Shoot Coaches, Don't They?

Name: They Shoot Coaches, Don't They?
Author: Mark Heisler
ISBN: 9780028608198

by Mark Heisler

Write a review

Overview

They Shoot Coaches, Don't They? traces UCLA's history and the parade of coaches that have tried to recapture the glory days and wrestled with Wooden's legacy. Mark Heisler has talked to the key players and coaches who helped establish UCLA's dynasty years ago and kept the dream alive till the 1994-95 season, when they finally threw the monkey off their back with a championship win after twenty years. His in-depth interviews with John Wooden, Denny Crum, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Bill Walton provide insight into what it meant to play for the school that started it all. He details the loss of innocence in this college sport over the past thirty years and illustrates the lengths to which many schools will go, including UCLA with its own shady booster in flashy Sam Gilbert, to make it to the big dance.

UCLA won its first two NCAA basketball championships in 1964 and 1965 and went on to win 10 titles in 12 years under John Wooden, creating a standard of excellence that many schools have tried to match with intense recruiting and backdoor deals. Heisler traces the rise of college basketball and focuses on UCLA history, including the 1995 championship season, and features an in-depth interview with Wooden himself. 20 b&w photos.