After they left coaching, their old rivalry had long since faded when they began their morning radio talk show, in 2004. They could talk about bass as easily as basketball, since both were avid fishermen.
And they seemed to be genuinely fond of each other, to the surprise of fans of both programs.
“I’m like Denny,” Hall said. “I’ve fished all over the world.”
Born Nov. 30, 1928, Hall grew up in Cynthiana, where his mother, Ruth, was a florist and his father, Charles, ran a dry-cleaning business and served two terms as Harrison County sheriff.
When asked what the “B” in his name stood for, Hall often replied, “Basketball.” His actual middle name – Beasman – came from his mother’s side of the family.
He played guard at the old Cynthiana High School and went off to UK in 1946 to play basketball, but found Rupp’s team stockpiled with a cast of All-Americans who would eventually win three NCAA championships in four seasons.
Hall transferred to the University of the South, in Sewanee, Tenn., where he set a single-game scoring record with 26 points. After his senior season, he played on a college all-star team that accompanied the Harlem Globetrotters on a 58-game European tour. He eventually returned to UK to finish work on his bachelor’s degree.
Hall was a production planner for a manufacturing company in Cynthiana when he decided to become a coach in 1956.
“I kept watching guys advance who had engineering degrees, and here I sat with a degree in phys ed,” he recalled in 1985. “I loved sports and spent all my spare time either refereeing or playing. So I figured I’d better get into the field I had prepared for.”
He coached football and basketball at Shepherdsville High from 1956-58, then became assistant coach at Regis, a small Jesuit college in Denver. One of his recruits was center Louis Stout, from Hall’s home town of Cynthiana. Years later, Stout recalled Hall’s distaste for underachieving.
“We beat Montana State on a Friday and lost to them the following night, “Stout said. “When we got changed, we noticed that the manager was getting out practice uniforms. We practiced until 1:30 a.m. and then he conducted a bed check at 2 a.m.”
Hall returned to Lexington in 1965 as Rupp’s assistant. He soon became UK’s top recruiter. With no secretary, Hall sent hand-written letters to recruits.
“I guess that turned out good in a way,” Hall said in his 1981 biography, “Joe B. Hall: My Own Kentucky Home,” written by Russell Rice.
“When a player that I was recruiting got one of those letters,” Hall said, “he felt that personal touch because most of the letters he had received from other colleges were typewritten.”
In 1969, Hall left UK – briefly – to become the coach at St. Louis University. He was on the job a week before returning to UK, apparently comfortable that Rupp would recommend him as his successor.
But as he was about to be forced into mandatory retirement in 1972, Rupp seemed to anoint assistant coach Gale Catlett – not Hall -- as his successor.
Hall got the job, but Rupp did not go gently into retirement. He kept an office in Memorial Coliseum and kept his television show.
Hall faced a "double whammy," recalled Billy Reed, the former sports writer for The Courier Journal and the Herald Leader. "Following in the foot steps of the then-winningest coach of all time -- and one who didn't want him as his successor."
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Hall won the affection and respect of some fans and sportswriters after successes in the NCAA Tournament, Reed said, but then he changed, becoming an authoritarian like Rupp and digging in his heels by refusing to play U of L.
In his first season, in 1972, Hall took over a team that included prize sophomores Kevin Grevey, Jimmy Dan Conner and Mike Flynn, playing their first season, thanks to an NCAA rule that prohibited freshmen from playing varsity ball.
Some fans spoke of an undefeated season; more optimistic followers predicted a three-year run of NCAA championships. Such talk evaporated when UK lost two of its first three games, to Iowa and Indiana.
In the fourth game, Hall showed a fiery side as UK fell behind North Carolina 52-26 at Louisville’s Freedom Hall. At one point, the new UK coach ripped off his sport coat and flung it to the floor, then stomped it, and appeared ready go after a referee until he was restrained by Conner.
“I got emotional,” Hall recalled years later. “Somebody had to get emotional. It was the turning point of my life. I had to set fire to the building or something.”
His listless team cut the 26-point deficit to six before losing 78-70, but in his first year it advanced to the NCAA’s Elite Eight, where it lost to Indiana.
That rivalry continued to heat up in Hall’s third season ,when Grevey and company – now seniors – were joined by another stellar freshman class, which included Givens, Rick Robey, James Lee and Mike Phillips.
His Indiana turning point
Early in the season, Indiana embarrassed UK 98-74 and IU coach Bob Knight added insult to injury when after the game he cuffed Hall on the back of the head. Knight said it was playful; Hall didn’t see it that way.
“From that moment, Hall became a different coach – tougher, meaner, angrier,” Courier-Journal columnist Billy Reed wrote.
Three months later, UK ruined Indiana’s unbeaten season with a 92-90 upset in the NCAA Mideast Regional final.
The victory sent UK to the Final Four, where it fell 92-85 to UCLA in the NCAA championship game -- Wooden’s last.
UCLA would go 19 years without another national championship; UK only had to wait three.
Kentucky basketball: UK and Notre Dame took opposite stances on segregated 1956 basketball tournament
In its opening game of the 1978 NCAA Tournament. His team fell behind Florida State 39-32 at halftime. Hall kept three starters on the bench to start the second half, and sent in reserves Dwane Casey, Fred Cowan and Lavon Williams. They made up some of the deficit and helped inspire the starters. Hall’s gamble worked, and UK won going away.
Four games later, Kentucky defeated Duke 94-88 for the championship as Givens scored 41 points.
But at the Final Four in St. Louis national media drew sharp contrasts between Duke’s beaming youngsters and UK’s seemingly joyless players.
There were other reasons for melancholy. Rupp died early in the season, at practically the same moment UK was wrapping up a victory at Kansas, his alma mater. And UK was in the middle of a two-year probation that included the loss of six scholarships because of recruiting violations.
Scandal fell again, seven years later when the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that 26 former UK players said they received cash from boosters during Hall’s tenure. The Lexington paper won a Pulitzer prize for its work.
Several players said they were misquoted or misunderstood, and NCAA investigators were unable to prove the allegations.
But Hall announced his retirement on March 22, 1985, after an 86-70 loss to St. John’s in the NCAA West Regional, in Denver, the city where his college coaching career began.
“I didn’t want to become an ‘old coach,’” he said the night he retired. “I was with coach Rupp from his 64th to 71st years, and I saw what the stress did to him.”
Hall later reflected on what he had missed because of a singular devotion to the game.
“I had coached for 29 years, and that was my life,” he said. “I’d spent 29 years with a single-minded approach to life -- and very little time for my family, very little understanding of the real world.”
After basketball, he went into the banking business in Lexington, ultimately retiring in the late 1990s to a life of hunting and fishing -- and feasting on high school and college games. He frequently had breakfast with friends at Wheeler Pharmacy in Lexington.
Hall’s wife of 55 years, Katharine, died in May 2007. He is survived by two daughters, Judy Derrickson and Kathy Summers, and a son, Steve.
His place in UK basketball may have fallen below the acceptable standard, which to many fans is perfection. But during his tenure, his teams averaged 23 victories a season and won or shared nine Southeastern Conference regular-season titles.
And in his 13 years, during which his team made three Final Fours and won both an NCAA and a National Invitational Tournament, he outperformed Rupp in his final 13 years on the bench.
Twenty-five years after Hall’s NCAA title, Hall remembered how the next year he got a letter from athletic director Cliff Hagan raising his salary my salary to 45,000 a year and was “tickled to death” about it.
“That was a lot of money in 1978-79,” he said. “It doesn’t compare to what coaches are making today, but I wouldn’t trade my association with Kentucky basketball with anybody in any other profession.”
Courier Journal reporter Jon Hale contributed to this story.
