Enlarge AP file photo John Wooden smiles on the court after his UCLA team won the national title in 1975, the 10th championship he won with the team. CAST YOUR VOTE CAST YOUR VOTE

Legend lost: Former UCLA coach John Wooden, 99, dies

"He was a better person than a basketball coach," Howland said more than once.

Considering that Wooden was arguably the greatest coach in the history of the game, it was quite a statement.

And, perhaps, no exaggeration.

Wooden died Friday night of natural causes at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, according to the university. He was 99.

His civic and athletic honors seem like the achievements of many men, not just one.

He is enshrined in the basketball Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach.

He was a three-time all-state high school player — a 5-10 guard — in Martinsville, Ind., leading his team to a state title in 1927.

He was a three-time All-American at Purdue and led the Boilermakers to two Big Ten titles and the 1932 national championship.

He was a high school teacher and coach for 11 years, served in the Navy during World War II and then was hired in 1946 as the athletics director, basketball coach and baseball coach at Indiana Teachers College, which became Indiana State University. His basketball teams at the college went 47-14.

He was hired in 1948 to coach basketball at UCLA, beginning a 27-year tenure with the Bruins that ended with the 1975 national championship, his 10th. He was 620-147 at UCLA.

Wooden was a man of wisdom and patience and, on occasion when he didn't like a referee's call, of bad temper. But he rarely if ever cursed on the bench. A typical outburst from Wooden might be something like "goodness gracious sakes alive."

He gathered together his principles and philosophy of life and sports into what became known as "The Pyramid of Success," and it certainly worked for him on and off the court.

Wooden admired those who served others, and he frequently told people his greatest heroes in history were Abraham Lincoln, for his courage and his ability to say a lot in a few words, and Mother Teresa, for her passion in helping others.

He was well-read, humble and completely devoted to his wife, Nell, who died in 1985 after being married to Wooden for 53 years. The basketball court at UCLA was dedicated "Nell and John Wooden Court" on Dec. 20, 2003.

Earlier that year, Wooden traveled to the White House to receive the U.S. Medal of Freedom, the highest honor awarded a U.S. civilian.

At the ceremony, then-president George W. Bush called Wooden "an example of what a good man should be."

Wooden lived modestly in his later years in a small apartment in Encino, Calif., filled with his beloved books, as well as many awards and trophies.

The one individual honor he cherished most, he used to say, was the Big Ten Medal for Academic Achievement, a small medallion he kept in his living room.

"It's given to the athlete with the highest grade-point average," he said proudly. "I earned that. That wasn't teammates. That wasn't the coach. So I'm more proud of that than anything."

In an interview in his apartment in 1999, he was asked what was the greatest accomplishment in his 27-year career at UCLA.

"The fact that almost all my players graduated," he said. "And almost all of them have done well in their professions — lawyers, doctors, dentists, eight ministers. I'm very proud of them."

As a coach, he was, to many observers, simply the best.

The achievements of the Bruins were incredible, earning him the nickname "The Wizard of Westwood" and filling UCLA's Pauley Pavilion with banners honoring him and his remarkable teams.

The stretch from 1964 to 1975 was amazing, something no one came close to either before or after his coaching days.

He won his first NCAA title in 1964, his 16th season at UCLA, with a small, quick, pressing team starring guards Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich and thriving largely because of a devastating full-court zone press.

The Bruins won the title again in 1965 with two returning starters.

In 1967, the Lew Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) era began. With Alcindor in the middle, the Bruins won three consecutive titles.

After Alcindor left, the Bruins continued to win. Teams featuring a front line of Sidney Wicks, Curtis Rowe and Steve Patterson won titles in 1970 and '71, increasing the consecutive-titles streak to five.

Then Bill Walton arrived. "The Walton Gang" won two more titles, in 1972 and '73, making it seven in a row for UCLA.

The string was broken when the Bruins, in Walton's senior year, lost in a memorable Final Four semifinal to North Carolina State.

The next year, with one returning starter, forward David Meyers, UCLA won another title, beating Kentucky in the final, and Wooden, then 64, retired.

His last dozen years as coach remain by far the most dominant stretch by one team in college basketball history.

The era included 10 national titles, four undefeated teams and NCAA-record winning streaks of 88 games overall and 38 games in the NCAA tournament.

Through it all and after he retired, Wooden always passed the credit to others. He won all of those games and all of those championships, he said, because of the skill, sacrifice and teamwork of his players.

His former players remained in close contact with him, even — maybe especially — players with whom he had clashed during their playing days.

Walton, a long-haired rebel who sometimes didn't see eye to eye with Wooden, years later sent his sons to school with slips of paper in their lunch bags containing Wooden quotations.

"Everything he said turned out to be right," Walton said years later. "He didn't teach basketball. He taught life."

Wooden regularly attended Bruins games the past three decades, sitting behind the team's bench. But even during dark days for UCLA teams, he always made it clear he was an observer and a fan, not a judge or a critic.

The coaches came and went. The latest, Howland, grew up in Santa Barbara, Calif., watching late-night taped telecasts of the best of Wooden's teams.

During the 2006 tournament, Howland talked frequently about Wooden and called him the greatest coach in the history of basketball.

And, to some, he was an even greater person.