TERRE HAUTE — When Indiana State University asked John Wooden earlier this year if it could name the Hulman Center floor after him, the legendary basketball coach politely made one request.
He wanted his late wife, Nellie, included in the title.
No objections, no problem.
Before the ISU men’s exhibition game against Albion on Saturday evening, the naming became official during a ceremony. Joining the festivities were the Woodens’ daughter, Nancy Wooden of Reseda, Calif.; a granddaughter, Christy Impelman of Huntington Beach, Calif; five Indiana State players from the late 1940s when Wooden coached the Sycamores — Jim Powers, Bob Brock, Max Woolsey, Jerry Kunkel and Jim Burger — and a student-manager from the late ’40s, John Sweet.
From Saturday forward, Hulman Center’s floor will be known as “Nellie & John Wooden Court.”
“I know she would like that,” John Wooden said in a taped message shown on Hulman Center’s giant video board.
Impelman said her 98-year-old grandfather would like to have attended the ceremony in person, but his health isn’t what it once was.
“His mind is great,” she told the Tribune-Star. “He’s very, very sharp. But his knees are worn out. His body’s not in as good a shape as his mind.”
Nancy Wooden described the ceremony as “a wonderful tribute to my dad and my mother.”
“I’m very happy to be here tonight,” she continued. “It’s a very exciting evening.”
“It’s a very special honor, especially as beautiful as the court came out with [a replica of] his actual signature on it [in two locations],” Impelman added.
“My grandmother always loved Indiana. Even though she lived in California for all those years, she was always an Indiana girl. They met in Martinsville.”
Nancy said she wasn’t surprised that ISU wanted to honor her father, even though he received most of his national fame coaching UCLA to 10 NCAA championships in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1946 to 1948, he compiled a 44-15 record as Indiana State Teachers College’s basketball coach while also serving as its baseball coach and athletics director and earning a master’s degree.
“A lot of long-lasting friendships were made here,” said Nancy Wooden, who attended Lab School for seventh and eighth grade when her father coached the Sycamores.
Brock played for John Wooden in the 1946-47 season that ended with Wooden declining an invitation to play in the NAIB national tournament in Kansas City because it banned blacks, including Indiana State reserve guard Clarence Walker, who is now deceased.
The NAIB changed its policy the next season.
Brock called his former coach “a scholar and a gentleman.”
“He told you what he wanted and he expected it,” Brock replied when asked if Wooden was a strict coach. “He was fair.”
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