Jim Richards is the former men's

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

head coach A head coach, senior coach or manager is a professional at training and developing athletes. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than other coaches. In some sports, the head coach is instead called the "manager", as in assoc ...

Western Kentucky University Western Kentucky University is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky. It was founded by the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 1906, though its roots reach back a quarter-century earlier. It operates regional campuses in Glasgow, Elizabethtow ...

, coaching the team for seven seasons from 1971 to 1978. He was inducted into the Western Kentucky University Athletic Hall of Fame in 2005. Richards was born in rural

Adair County, Kentucky Adair County is a county located in the U.S. state of Kentucky. Its county seat is Columbia. The county was founded in 1801 and named for John Adair, then Speaker of the House in Kentucky and later Governor of Kentucky (1820 – 1824). Adair Co ...

, and played basketball for one year at Adair County High School. He was recruited to play

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

at Western by Coach E. A. Diddle (better known as the basketball coach). Diddle got Richards into officiating high school basketball. After graduation, Richards was hired as head basketball coach at Auburn High School. He went from there to Glasgow High, where he coached the Scotties to a state championship in 1968. Richards returned to Western as an assistant the following year, when an opening occurred on

John Oldham John Oldham may refer to: *John Oldham (colonist) (1592–1636), early Puritan settler in Massachusetts *John Oldham (poet) (1653–1684), English poet * John Oldham (psychiatrist), American psychiatrist *John Oldham (engineer) (1779–1840), Iris ...

's staff after

Gene Rhodes Eugene Stephen Rhodes (September 2, 1927 – March 10, 2018) was an American basketball player and coach. Career Rhodes played college basketball at Western Kentucky University. While Rhodes was a player, WKU won the Ohio Valley Conference champ ...

left to coach the

Kentucky Colonels The Kentucky Colonels were a member of the American Basketball Association for all of the league's nine years. The name is derived from the historic Kentucky colonels. The Colonels won the most games and had the highest winning percentage of ...

of the

American Basketball Association The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a major men's professional basketball league from 1967 to 1976. The ABA ceased to exist with the ABA–NBA merger, American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger in 1976, ...

. When Oldham left the sidelines to become athletic director, Richards became head coach for the 1971-1972 season. His overall record at Western was 102-84. His Hilltopper teams won two regular season

Ohio Valley Conference The Ohio Valley Conference (OVC) is a collegiate List of NCAA conferences, athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern and Southeastern United States, Southeastern United States. It participates in NCAA Divisi ...

championships, plus two tournament championships. The Toppers made the

NCAA men's basketball tournament The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as NCAA March Madness and commonly called March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from ...

twice, with an overall record of one win and two losses.Sports-Reference.com: Jim Richards
/ref> After stepping down as head basketball coach, Richards coached the men's

golf Golf is a club-and-ball sport in which players use various clubs to hit balls into a series of holes on a course in as few strokes as possible. Golf, unlike most ball games, cannot and does not use a standardized playing area, and coping wi ...

team. One of his recruits was

Kenny Perry James Kenneth Perry (born August 10, 1960) is an American professional golfer who currently plays on the PGA Tour Champions. He won 14 PGA Tour events and has won nine PGA Tour Champions events including four senior major championships: the 20 ...

from nearby

Franklin, Kentucky Franklin is a home rule-class city in and the county seat of Simpson County, Kentucky, United States. The county is located on the south central border of the state, and its population was 10,176 at the 2020 census. Kentucky Downs, formerly ...

. Perry went on to play on the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also k ...

References

Year of birth missing (living people) Living people Basketball coaches from Kentucky Western Kentucky Hilltoppers and Lady Toppers athletic directors Western Kentucky Hilltoppers baseball players Western Kentucky Hilltoppers basketball coaches College golf coaches in the United States High school basketball coaches in the United States People from Adair County, Kentucky {{US-basketball-coach-stub