The championship tradition of University of Evansville basketball begins with Hall of Fame Coach Arad McCutchan, and UE is making sure that future generations remember.

Prior to tip-off at the Purple Aces’ season opener November 15 against Austin Peay, a number of Coach McCutchan’s players will join the fans in helping dedicate the playing floor at Roberts Stadium as Arad A. McCutchan Court. It’s a tribute that will help Aces’ fans remember the man who coached the Aces to five NCAA College Division national championships, all the while pointing out that he was a math instructor first and a basketball coach second.

“He was a gentleman,” says Hugh Ahlering, one of ‘Mac’s Boys’ in the late ‘50s and co-chair of next week’s event with Wayne Boultinghouse, Bob Clayton, Thornton Patberg and Rick Smith. “Everybody liked to play for him.”

Here are just some of McCutchan’s accomplishments:

•A won-loss record of 514-314 in his 31 years as head coach from 1946 through 1977

•NCAA college division national championships in 1959, 1960, 1964, 1965 and 1971

•The first College Division coach inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.

•15 All-Americans, including NBA All-Stars Jerry Sloan and Don Buse

•The first Evansville inductee into the Missouri Valley Conference Hall of Fame

“He was a fierce competitor, but you never saw him screaming at anyone and you never heard a cuss word come out of his mouth,” Buse said in an Evansville Press story the day after McCutchan’s death in 1993 at age 80. “He won all those games and all those championships, but without all the noise that so many coaches make today. He was a class guy.”

McCutchan was also ahead of his time, and innovative. He recruited African-American players before most coaches in this region did, beginning in the ‘50s with two of UE’s best–Jim Smallins and Ed Smallwood. The math teacher in him came up with what he called a PPP?(Points Per Possession) chart that showed how much each offensive possession was worth. One year, for example, it came out to .99 points, but the average climbed to 1.2 whenever the Aces got to the free throw line, and to 1.4 whenever his team took a shot in what he called the ‘70 percent sure shot’ range.

He once told a reporter that he did away with purple jerseys in favor of orange because “I took a course that rated the various colors on ease of visibility. Orange was rated the best. You see, the average crowd at a winter game is dressed in dark and when we used purple uniforms, the players seemed hidden in the crowd. There’s no surer way to ruin a fast break than to lose your teammates.”

His players also donned big robes instead of the traditional pullover shirt and pants worn by most players over their uniforms before they entered a game. He had seen one too many player try futilely to get out of pants in order to enter a game quickly at time-outs. But the most noticed change that McCutchan made was putting his players in sleeved jerseys. He explained: “I feel that is what most players wear in practice and therefore, what they are most comfortable in. It’s also more flattering to the thin ballplayer.”

Of course, it takes more than keen fashion sense and a gentlemanly demeanor to get your insignia on a basketball court. His teams won a lot of big games in 31 years. All five NCAA?Tournament championships came at Roberts Stadium because the NCAA loved holding its College Division tournament in a city that embraced college basketball, and Mac’s Boys in particular.

“His whole concept was so simple–-spread out and run,” Ahlering says. “We understood what he wanted from us, and he recruited good players who played the game the way he wanted it played. That’s why he was so successful.”