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Charles Rugg, a Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer who died Thursday at the age of 94, might well have been the best basketball coach 99.9% of the world’s basketball fans never heard of.
Rick Cleveland
That’s because Rugg did his coaching at Belhaven, a tiny Presbyterian school in Jackson that played its NAIA games in a 500-seat building now appropriately known as Charles Rugg Arena. And if that humble gym’s walls could talk, what an entertaining and inspirational tale they could tell. Charlie Rugg did it his way. He was tough. He was demanding. And if you hung around him long enough, you would learn how smart he was and that he had a tender side as well.
Understand, Rugg took the Belhaven job not long after the former women’s college began accepting men. He built the program from scratch.
Rugg’s teams won hundreds and hundreds of basketball games, but more importantly he positively affected thousands of athletes and students. He was more than a basketball coach. He was a national championship tennis coach. He was a beloved history professor. Before that, he was a fire-balling professional baseball pitcher until his promising career was ended by an arm injury after he went to spring training with the Brooklyn Dodgers and players such as Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Peewee Reese.
He was an excellent golfer until he tired of the game. He was a Bible scholar. Later in life, he was a rose grower of much renown.
My introduction to Rugg came more than half a century ago when I was a teen sports writer in Hattiesburg, often assigned to cover William Carey basketball games. Belhaven was Carey’s arch-rival. It was Rugg vs. Carey’s John O’Keefe, two basketball coaches who could match Xs and Os with any coach at any level, anywhere. It was Baptists vs. Presbyterians. Two things were certain: a pre-game prayer and a mid-game brawl (or two). Noses were broken. Blood was spilled.
Ole Miss-Mississippi State had nothing on Carey-Belhaven when it came to intensity and ferocity. Once, in Hattiesburg, Rugg was called for a technical five seconds into the game.
The late, great Orley Hood, the Mark Twain of Mississippi newspaper writers, once wrote that Rugg was “the most dynamic man I ever met.” At Belhaven, Orley served as Rugg’s basketball manager and played a little tennis as well.
“It was my lucky day the day I met Charlie Rugg,” Hood wrote.
Mark Windham, who became like the son Charlie and Janie Rugg never had in their 71 years of marriage, was a shy and skinny teen when he walked on to the Belhaven campus in 1972. He well remembers his first game, especially Rugg’s halftime speech.
“Coach wasn’t happy with our effort, and he let us know it,” Windham said.
Windham just thought Rugg’s booming voice was loud, until Rugg booted a metal garbage can crashing clear across the locker room, caving it beyond repair.
Said Windham, “I was terrified.”
To say Windham grew to love Rugg like a second father is an understatement.
“I had no confidence and a poor self-image when I got to Belhaven,” Windham said. “Coach Rugg changed all that. He impacted my life forever. I have no words to adequately express the influence he had on my life.”
Put it this way: Rugg once drove Windham and a friend to a lumber company where they would work over the summer stacking lumber and driving a forklift. Seven years later, Windham bought the company.
“Everything I have, I owe to Charlie and Janie Rugg,” Windham said.
And I well remember my first interview with Richard Williams, the Hall of Fame coach who famously took Mississippi State to the Final Four. This was just after he got the job at State. I asked Williams about his coaching influences. The first name he mentioned: Charlie Rugg.
Williams said he often visited Rugg’s Belhaven practices when he was a young high school coach at St. Andrew’s. He learned about Rugg’s match-up zone defense and his intricate offensive system. Later, when Williams was the head coach at Copiah-Lincoln Junior College, his teams often scrimmaged against Belhaven. Williams said he always learned something.
“I believe Charlie is one of the all-time great coaches who never received the respect due him,” Williams said.
But those who played for Rugg or watched his teams play know how good he was. John Brady, who coached LSU to the Final Four, knows. Brady was a cocky, sharp-shooting guard from McComb when he arrived at Belhaven in 1972. Rugg taught Brady that basketball was about lots more than swishing jump shots.
“He stayed on my ass, and that’s what I needed,” Brady said.
“He taught me that if anybody was going to change me, it was going to me,” Brady said. “I cherish the time he made me uncomfortable with myself. He made me want to coach.”
Yes, and Brady never forgot. When LSU went to Indianapolis for the Final Four in 2006, he took Charlie Rugg with him. What’s more, he had Rugg talk to his team at a pre-Final Four workout. What’s even more, when LSU had held a banquet to celebrate an SEC Championship and the Final Four participation, Rugg was there and Brady presented him with a Final Four ring that Rugg treasured.
Rugg never really coached big-time college basketball, but Brady knew Rugg was a big-time coach.
