Pete Newell, who coached UC Berkeley to the 1959 National Collegiate Athletic Assn. basketball title and was one of only three men to guide teams to National Invitation Tournament, NCAA and Olympic championships, died Monday. He was 93.
Newell, a resident of Rancho Santa Fe, died at the nearby home of Dr. Earl Shultz, one of his former Cal players who had been caring for him. Newell had been in poor health since lung surgery in 2005, his son Roger said.
By winning the then-prestigious NIT with the University of San Francisco in 1949, guiding Cal to the NCAA title and winning the 1960 Olympic gold medal with a roster that included Oscar Robertson, Jerry Lucas and Jerry West, Newell became the first coach to claim all three titles.
The only others are Dean Smith and Bob Knight.
West and a writer had planned to meet with Newell on Monday to do an interview for an upcoming book, Roger Newell said.
"He was my Olympic coach," West said later Monday. "He was my mentor. When you are around a guy like him, you realize how beloved he really is. He was a great teacher. He loved basketball. He loved to teach young kids how to play basketball."
"In his time, I think he was one of the better coaches the game has ever seen," former UCLA coach John Wooden, a close rival of Newell early in his career, said in 2005.
"When I think of the outstanding teachers of the game, he ranked up there with the very best," Wooden said.
Knight, a generation younger than Newell, considered him a mentor.
"From a personal standpoint, no one had a greater influence on what I do or try to teach than Pete Newell has had," Knight said.
"The influence he had in basketball has been something that carried on for over 60 years, beginning when he was coaching at the University of San Francisco."
Hall of Fame
Inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1979, Newell was elected not as a coach but as a "contributor," because his brief but stellar career was a year short of the 15-year requirement for coaches.
He retired from coaching in 1960 at only 44 -- in part because of the self-induced stress that contributed to his chain-smoking, chugging coffee and going without food before games, and in part, he later suggested, because of his discomfort with the adulation surrounding him.
Though he left the bench early, by the end of his life, Newell's effect on the game had extended almost five decades after his retirement as a coach.
