By Lee Strawther
The Sporting Tribune
The John R. Wooden Award will celebrate it’s 50th anniversary this season. Leading up to the award ceremony on April 10, 2026, The Sporting Tribune in partnership with the Wooden Award and the Los Angeles Athletic Club will highlight past winners of the Wooden Award and the Legends of Coaching Award.
They say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, and that’s certainly the case when it comes to basketball coach Gene Keady. It could be tough to find his easy-going side through his gruff exterior, but it was in there.
“He had the uncanny ability to rip you and tell you that you are OK in the same sentence,” remembers Matt Painter, who played for Keady from 1989 to 1993 and was an assistant coach under him for one season.
Lloyd Eugene Keady was born in Larned, Kansas on May 21, 1936 and graduated from Larned High School in 1954. He developed a penchant for sports early on thanks to his father’s passion for it, and as a result he became a four-sport athlete at Garden City Junior College in Garden City, Kansas after high school. In fact he became a JC All-American quarterback for the Broncbusters.
After two years of junior college, Keady remained in his home state and continued his education and athletic career at Kansas State University where he lettered in football, baseball and track. In the summer of 1958 he graduated from K-State with a degree in Biological Sciences and Physical Education and was drafted in the 19th round of the ’58 NFL draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers (223rd overall). But despite the achievement he never played professionally.
Opting to jump into coaching instead, Keady accepted a teaching and coaching position at Beloit Junior-Senior High School in Beloit, Kansas. The only coaching position available at the time was for the basketball team, which he would up leading to a 142-47 record over the course of six seasons (1959-1965).
Keen on the value of education he earned his master’s degree in education from Kansas State in 1964 while still coaching at Beloit.
In 1965 Keady officially began his college coaching career at Hutchinson Junior College in Hutchinson, Kansas where he served as the assistant coach. After only one season he was promoted to head coach, and under his leadership the Blue Dragons won six Jayhawk Conference titles with Keady earning junior college coach of the year honors for his region three times (1971, 1972, 1973).
The highlight of his early coaching career came in ’73 when Hutchinson finished second in the junior college national tournament after compiling a 29-4 mark. His overall record during his time there (1965-1974) was 187-48.
Following the 1974 season, Keady was ready to transition to Division I basketball, becoming an assistant coach at the University of Arkansas. Head coach Eddie Sutton, with Keady’s help, turned the Razorbacks into a national contender as they appeared in the 1977 NCAA tournament for the first time in nineteen years, and reached the Final Four in 1978.
After finishing third in the ’78 national tournament, Keady was ready for his next challenge and took the head coach position at Western Kentucky University, where by his second season the team went 21–8 and was named Ohio Valley Conference Co-Champions, earning him yet another trip to an NCAA tournament. Those would be his only two seasons leading the Hilltoppers.
In April 1980 Keady became the head basketball coach at Purdue University, and when it was all said and done, wound up the winningest coach in program history with 493 victories. He was named the Big Ten Conference Coach of the Year a record seven times, guiding the Boilermakers to six conference titles, including three straight from 1994 to 1996, which also made him the second winningest coach in conference history at the time.
With 25 seasons invested at Purdue, Keady retired from coaching in 2005 after leading the Boilermakers to 18 NCAA tournament appearances, two Elite Eight appearances and five Sweet Sixteens.
Just months later, however, he accepted an assistant coaching position with the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, a job he would hold for just one season.
As the head coach of a variety of USA Basketball teams, Keady tallied a 22–2 record over four different tournaments from 1979 to 1991, leading Team USA to two gold medals: one in 1979 at the National Sports Festival, and another in 1989 at the World University Games. His team also nabbed the silver medal in 1985 at the ninth edition of the R. Williams Jones Cup, and he was also an assistant coach for the Gold Medal-winning Dream Team in the 2000 Games in Sydney.
A six-time national college coach of the year, Keady received the prestigious John R. Wooden “Legends of Coaching” Award in 2007, was inducted into the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013, and Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2023.
Though known for his spirited personality and piercing glares on the court, the coaching legend could also be philosophical at times off of it.
“You have to be disciplined doing the mundane things day to day,” he once said, adding later that, “Basketball is an easy game to play, but it is a difficult game to master.”
Difficult for most, but not so much for Gene Keady.