On St. Patrick’s Day 1979, Jock Sutherland was within hours of achieving his lifelong dream, and he had a hard time mustering a smile.

This chapter is excerpted from The Quickest Thinking Coach in America: JOCK (copyright 2023 by Mr. Write Coach LLC)

March 17, 1979

Jock Sutherland was miserable on this Saturday morning. The coach who once pulled down his pants in the middle of a game to protest a referee’s call, the man some people referred to as the clown prince of Kentucky high school basketball, could barely manage a smile. He was 12 hours and two games from achieving the one thing that had kept him in coaching for almost 25 years — the state championship. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or two for three or four nights. His stomach churned. His head ached. He had assembled the team at Lafayette High School that he couldn’t even imagine when he had been a player at the school in the 1940s. Size. Speed. Athleticism. Dedication. Black players. White players. Nine seniors. They had won 34 games and lost only one. They had been ranked No. 1 in the state every week since the season started. They were ranked the No. 2 high school team in the nation.

None of that would matter at the end of this day if they couldn’t win these last two games. Sutherland didn’t want to start building over again. Not at age 51. His two sons were grown. Charlie, the oldest, was a lawyer. Glenn was finishing dental school. It was time to enjoy life with his wife, Snooks, who had been so patient with him for almost 30 years and quietly watched him suffer so much whenever his team lost a game.

Charles “Jock” Sutherland didn’t want to coach again after this day. He just wanted this day to be over.

He wished he could enjoy the moment. He wanted to walk out on the floor at the 24,000-seat Rupp Arena in Lexington, Ky., and just let the cheers of the massive crowd wash over for him. It’s a ritual that introduces spring in Kentucky — the boys’ state high school basketball tournament, a tradition so rich that the state owns the trademark — The Sweet Sixteen. In Kentucky, all 200-plus high schools compete for the same basketball championship. Big schools. Small schools. Urban schools. Mountain schools. Even Indiana’s storied high school basketball tournament has been divided into classes. But Kentucky has refused to change. There is always hope that some little school that nobody had ever heard of, schools with names like Carr Creek, Cuba and Brewers, will somehow rise up and swat the powerful teams from Louisville and Lexington, adding another chapter to the tournament’s Cinderella lore.

It happens every March.

The tournament begins every March, with all the schools competing in 64 district tournaments. The winners and the runners-up in each of those districts — and that quirk in the system was huge for Sutherland’s team this year — advance to 16 regional tournaments, eight teams in each region. The 16 region champs, the Sweet Sixteen, come to Lexington or Louisville for four days of combat. First-round games on Wednesday and Thursday. Quarterfinals on Friday. The semifinal games on Saturday morning. Then, the final event in this teenage marathon, the championship game on Saturday night, always starting at 8 o’clock. And for a high school basketball coach in Kentucky, there’s nothing quite like having your team on the court that Saturday night.

The deafening noise starts long before the tip-off. The bands for the two championship teams are seated at opposite ends of the floor, behind each basket. The cheering sections stretch from the floor to the rafters, 100 feet above. There’s no need to cue fans to yell like they do in NBA games. Each side tries to make more noise than the other. Each band tries to play louder than its counterpart.

On the floor, the players try to ignore it all, going through their warm-ups as if they were back in their high school gyms, getting ready for another day of practice.

Then, when you think it can’t get any louder, all goes quiet. The horn sounds, and the clock shows that there are two minutes until game time. Those two minutes seem to last forever.

The players go back to their benches. The lights go dim.

The melody of “My Old Kentucky Home” permeates the arena. “Weep no more, my lady. Weep no more today …”

Alumni tear up. The players, so implacable only moments before, feel their hands begin to tremble, lumps forming in their throats. Coaches’ palms begin to sweat.

The lights return, and the parade onto the floor begins. Team managers, ball boys, superintendents, principals, and assistant coaches are introduced to loud cheers. Next, the reserve players, the decibel level increasing. Then the starting lineups, and you can’t hear your own thoughts. Finally, the announcer bellows above the crowd noise, “And now, the head coach of the …”

Watching the tournament grow

Jock Sutherland had attended every Kentucky Boys State Basketball Tournament since 1941, except for one year when he was in the Army. He had always been a spectator on that special Saturday night. In 1947, when he was a senior at Lafayette, the team was one of the top-ranked in the state, but the Generals were upset in the regional championship game, one game short of The Sweet Sixteen. As a coach, Sutherland was making his sixth trip to the tournament. He was the first coach in state history to take three different schools there. But in those five previous tournament appearances, his teams had won only one game, never making it even to Saturday morning’s semifinal rounds.

He had watched the tournament outgrow the 3,800-seat Alumni Gymnasium in Lexington, the 7,000-seat Convention Center in Louisville, the 11,500-seat Memorial Coliseum in Lexington and the 17,000-seat Freedom Hall in Louisville.

Now, the tournament was back in Lexington, being played for the first time in the Rupp Arena, the largest basketball-only facility in the nation.

He grew up only a few blocks from the arena named for the University of Kentucky’s legendary basketball coach, the coach whose practices he had watched as a boy, and now he was back with a team that everyone expected to win the state championship.

And he was flat-out miserable.

Sometimes, he feared he would never get this close to the championship game. Between 1959 and 1971, his teams reached The Sweet Sixteen five times. But by the fall of 1978, the beginning of this season, none of his teams had even won a single game in the district tournament since the ’71 season. He began to question his coaching ability. Maybe he had lost his touch. Maybe he couldn’t communicate with today’s players. Maybe he should have stayed in college coaching at Alabama when he had the chance. He knew he could have been an NCAA Division I head coach by now. But this team, the 1978-79 Lafayette Generals, had the potential to erase all the past doubts and disappointments. This team had a chance to be one of the best of all time in Kentucky.

They were led by 6-foot-3 guard Dirk Minniefield, who was being recruited by every major school in the country. They had two other first-team all-staters, 6-foot-7 center Tony Wilson and 6-foot ball-handling wizard Junior Johnson. Johnson had transferred to the school from nearby Scott County High just before the beginning of the season. Five other seniors would have been standouts at most schools in the state, but they were content to play supporting roles, even though their parents often weren’t happy about it.

They won their first two games in the tournament by more than 20 points each. That brought Sutherland to Saturday morning, March 17, 1979, and the endurance test that Kentucky requires of its best high school basketball teams.

In the NBA, the multi-millionaire players complain about playing games on back-to-back nights and have it written into the union rules that they can’t play more than two days in succession. To win the state championship in Kentucky, a team must win its first-round game on Wednesday or Thursday, a quarterfinal game on Friday, then two more games on Saturday, one in the morning, the second beginning, always at 8 o’clock on Saturday night.

Even 16- and 17-year-old legs get tired during such a demanding day. Then there is the nightlife. During state tournament weekend, every hotel room is a party. The lobbies and hallways are filled with students who come to support their teams and test their fake IDs and older basketball fans who forget they aren’t in high school anymore.

No time to party

Sutherland knew he had to keep his team away from all that. Even though all his players lived in Lexington, tournament officials required them to stay at a local motel. He registered them at the Howard Johnson Motel, at the north end of the city, several miles from Rupp Arena downtown at Broadway and Vine. He hired two security guards to keep the players in and the fans out. There was no need to worry about the players. This team came to play. Not to party. They were all in bed early on Friday night. Jock was the only one awake. He fretted as he wandered the motel’s hallways, watching out for drunks and troublemakers. He knew he had the best team in the tournament, the best team he had ever had. Still … a turned ankle, a twisted knee, an antagonistic referee … anything could go wrong.

He told me that morning that he was still patrolling the motel around 2:30 a.m. when he encountered a staggering fan waving a whiskey bottle.

“Have a drink with me, Jock,” the man bellowed.

“No thanks, sir,” he replied.

The drunk became belligerent.

“Either drink with me or fight me,” the man said.

Jock never was much of a fighter. His competitive temper got him in trouble a few times, and he almost always got the worst of it. So he took the bottle and pretended to take a swig.

Then he watched the man crash onto the floor.

He was still there when Sutherland woke his players just after dawn.

The players, coaches and the journalist following the team, me, gathered for breakfast at around 6:30 a.m.

Jock kept his happy face on for the players as they ate. They barely paid attention anyway.

Away from his team, though, the anxiety showed. I was the sports editor of the Lexington Herald then and was spending the day following him and the team. “I feel like I’m getting ready to storm the beach at Normandy,” he confided. “I just want to wake up Sunday morning. I want this to be all over with.”

The players and assistant coach Donnie Harville rode together in a van. Jock drove Harville’s car with me tagging along. “The players can do all their jive talkin’ around Donnie,” Sutherland said. “But they’re pretty loose around me, too. They call me ‘Jock.’ A few years ago, I would never have let a player call me that during the season. You’ve got to change with the times, but you still have to draw the line. They don’t do all that other talking around me.”

As the team dressed at Rupp Arena, Sutherland attracted a small crowd of media types and basketball junkies outside the locker room. As usual, his nervousness manifested itself in a comedy monologue about his team’s quarterfinal victory over Caverna High School.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about today,” he said.

“Aw, be positive, Jock,” replied one of the men in the group.

“Well, I had a good feeling before the Caverna game, and we almost got beat,” Sutherland said.

“Almost got beat?” the man said incredulously. “You won by 21 points.”

“Yeah,” said Sutherland, recalling the late rally it took to beat Caverna, “that’s like a man who’s been in a car wreck, and the car rolls over 93 times. He comes out alive, all right, but he sure gets beat all to hell.”

Everybody laughed.

Jock seemed pleased. He always liked entertaining people. He had a knack for the quick joke for the media. And his stunts during games had become part of the state’s high school basketball lore. But most of his antics had a purpose. He often got so wound up in games that, in his words, he began over-coaching. He wanted to make every pass for his players, take every shot. He realized he was making them tense, making them play worse. So he would do something outrageous. Like, leave. Once, during a game in the Ashland Invitational Tournament, he jumped off the bench in anger, then bolted out of the gym doors, only to discover that they led directly to the outside and locked behind him. He went around the front of the school and tried to walk back in.

“You need a ticket,” the woman at the door said.

“I’m the coach,” Jock replied.

“How can you be the coach out here, and the game’s going on in there?” she asked.

Jock didn’t argue anymore. He paid the two dollars, he said, and returned to his seat on the bench.

No joking now

But jokes and stunts didn’t get him to the semifinals of the state tournament with the No. 1 team in Kentucky in March of 1979. His intensity surfaced early in the Saturday morning game against Warren East. He didn’t expect his Generals to struggle much against this team. He told them to save something for the championship game. “And don’t commit any silly fouls,” he said. “Just play solid defense.”

Early in the second quarter, the referee called a reach-in foul on guard Junior Johnson. It was easily avoidable.

“Dammit, Junior, I said no silly fouls!” Sutherland yelled from the bench.

Johnson shrugged.

A minute later, the referee called another foul on Johnson.

Sutherland was furious. The score was still close, and now he would have to remove one of his top players because of foul problems.

“Get as far away from me as you can,” Sutherland told his unrepentant player. “You’re going to stay there until you’re ready to play.”

A few minutes later, the team manager approached Sutherland. “Coach, Junior says he’s ready.”

“You tell him he’ll be ready when I say he’s ready,” Sutherland said, sending the confused manager back to the end of the bench.

In the meantime, substitute Brandt Ely played well in place of Johnson. Ely probably would have started this season if Johnson hadn’t transferred. The senior reserve scored 11 points, and Lafayette, after trailing by one at halftime, outscored Warren East 20-6 in the third quarter.

Sutherland left Johnson on the bench until only a few minutes remained in the game. Lafayette led comfortably.

“Go in and work up a sweat, Junior,” Jock said. “I want you to be loose for tonight.”

Johnson refused.

Sutherland fumed.

It had been that way much of the season between them, so much alike in their desire to win the state championship, each so sure that they knew the best way to get it done. But one of them was the coach, one a player.

So Johnson sat alone in the locker room as his teammates whooped it up, anticipating the championship game, just a few hours away.

It was past noon when the team dressed and left the arena after its 66-58 victory.

I asked to ride in the van with the team to accompany the players to lunch.

“Why don’t you ride with me, Dirk,” Sutherland said to his All-American guard.

Minniefield looked at Johnson.

“Can I ride with you all, too?” Junior said quietly.

Jock invited him to get into the car.

I didn’t witness what happened next, but from the conversation I had then and 30 years later, it went something like this:

Minniefield played peacemaker. “Can you two settle this thing next week?” he said. “We got to win tonight.”

Jock looked at Junior.

“Go ahead, have your say,” the coach told the freckle-faced senior.

“You’re just an old-fashioned jackass,” Junior told him. “You don’t know anything about basketball. You never wanted me on this team. Why can’t you leave me alone.”

He continued the tirade for a couple of minutes.

“Do I get a turn?” Jock asked.

Junior stopped talking.

“You’re a spoiled rotten asshole,” the coach said. “The only thing you’re interested in is yourself. If you have a good game and Dirk doesn’t, but we win, he’s happy for you. But if he has a good game and you don’t, you’re not happy. It’s all about you. But we don’t need you. We can win this thing without you.”

Sutherland pulled the car into the parking lot at Frisch’s restaurant. It was quiet for a moment.

Then Junior spoke.

“I’m not going to get to play tonight, am I, Coach?”

Jock looked right at him.

“Yes, you are. I’m going to make you captain. And you’re going to embarrass yourself in front of 20,000 people. And I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.”

They walked into the restaurant and joined the rest of the team without speaking another word.

‘I think I’d rather die’

Springtime doesn’t always follow the calendar in Kentucky. It’s almost always sunny and warm by Sweet Sixteen time in mid-March unless the traditional April showers start early.

After lunch, Sutherland went back to the motel, and Snooks joined him. The swimming pool was empty, but they sat beside it outside in a couple of lounge chairs, sharing a moment as they almost always had on game day — him a nervous wreck, her calm and quiet.

After the dustup with Johnson, his miserable day seemed worse than ever. He told her, “If we don’t win this game, I think I’d rather die than face another day.”

As she had for almost 30 years, riding beside him in school buses across the commonwealth, raising their two boys, having dinner ready at 6:30 every night except game nights. She had always been the still to his storm.

“You’d rather die?” she said. “What about your boys? What about me? You’d just leave us here alone.”

The man once labeled “The Quickest Thinking Coach in America” didn’t have an answer.

“Well, I … I …”

She smiled.

“Don’t worry. You’re going to win this game. It’s what you’ve worked for your entire life.”

He wasn’t so sure. He was just hours away from the game of his lifetime and had been arguing with one of his star players. Everything seemed so complicated sometimes. College coaches began recruiting kids when they were still in junior high, telling them they were stars before they ever stepped foot in a high school gym. Even if the kids didn’t believe it, their parents did.

It’s supposed to be a simple game. You put the ball in the basket, just as he had done shot after shot, day after day, long before he was Jock, when he was just skinny Charlie Sutherland who met a neighbor boy named Tommy who changed the direction of his life.