College basketball fans across Kentucky are mourning the loss of a legend. Former University of Louisville coach Denny Crum died at his home Tuesday morning. He was 86 years old.
Over the course of three decades, Coach Crum led the University of Louisville Cardinals to six Final Fours and two national championships. Ashland native Jeff Hall played on the 1986 national championship team.
"To play in two Final Fours and win one of them's not too bad," Hall said.
Hall was a two-year starter on the team and, he said, acted as a kind of mediator between Crum and the rest of the team.
"He used to chew me out, so I could go out and get on the other guys, so during time outs, he'd get on me a little bit and I'd go out there and say, 'Come on, guys, this is what coach wants us to do,'" Hall said.
Hall said those years playing for Crum and coaching under him as a graduate assistant had an impact far beyond the court.
"He taught me life lessons that I didn't even know he was teaching me," he said. "He taught me the importance of playing together, working together. In your work environment, you have to learn to get along with a lot of different egos, attitudes, personalities, whatever you want to call it."
After Crum retired from coaching, he co-hosted a radio show with his former adversary, retired UK coach Joe B. Hall, for years. It's another way Jeff Hall says Crum was setting an example for people.
"Such a learning opportunity that we need to take from this. Today, just because you and I disagree on something, we've got to hate one another. That's not how it's supposed to be. You and I could be politically different, you like one thing, I like another, but that doesn't mean that I have to sit down and say, 'Well, I really dislike you as a person,'" he said.
This evening, the Cardinal nation is mourning a man who meant so much to so many over those three decades.
"We all know Coach is in a better place. There's no doubt," he said. "He just meant a lot to a lot of different people. He took a lot of us from being boys and made us men."
Crum's funeral arrangements have not been announced.
