Happy 84th Birthday to Legendary Purdue Basketball Coach Gene Keady
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — We know all the numbers on Gene Keady practically by heart. The legendary Purdue basketball coach won 550 games as a college coach, six Big Ten titles and five national coach of the year honors.
But the biggest number today — on Thursday, May 21 — for Keady is 84.
Why? Because today is Coach's birthday, and he'll be celebrating down in Myrtle Beach, S.C., with his wife Kathleen and others.
Keady, who coached at Purdue from 1980 to 2005, still spends a lot of time around the program and leaves his home in South Carolina often during the season to come up and watch Purdue play. It helps to keep that closeness to the program, of course, because one of his former players, Matt Painter, was the guy who replaced him and he's been running the program for 15 years now. Both remain very close.
During a long interview with Sports Illustrated in March just before the COVID-19 pandemic cleared the sports calendar, Keady said he's feeling great loving life in South Carolina with Kathleen and lots of friends and family. He still plays a lot of golf and shot his age for the first time last year. (That becomes one shot easier now!)
And during the pandemic, the Keadys have posted a lot of pictures of Coach working around the house and doing a lot of gardening. Life is good.
Please leave a birthday message for Coach Keady in the comments sections below.
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Tom Brew is an award-winning journalist who's worked at some America's finest newspapers, including the Tampa Bay (Fla.) Times, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Indianapolis Star. He also owns the book publishing company, Hilltop30 Publishing Group, and he has written four books and published 16 others.