Former Oklahoma State basketball coach Eddie Sutton – who won 806 games at the collegiate level – has been selected for enshrinement in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

Sutton, 84, had been nominated seven times before . The induction ceremony, in Springfield, Massachusetts, is scheduled for August 29, 2020.

“It is certainly an honor that is richly deserved, one that is long overdue and certainly anybody that has played for you and or coached under you knew that you were a hall of famer several decades ago,”said Bill Self, Kansas coach, Naismith Hall of Fame inductee and former assistant under Sutton at Oklahoma State.

Sutton is the first coach  to lead four different schools to the NCAA tournament. He ranks 11th all-time with 806 career victories. Sutton is an eight-time conference coach of the year and a two-time recipient of the Associated Press National Coach of the Year award (1978, 1986). Sutton coached Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky and his alma mater, Oklahoma State, to a combined 26 NCAA Tournament appearances. In 37 seasons of Division I coaching, he won 17 conference regular season and tournament championships.

 “I always had great respect for the job he did coaching and learned so much from watching his teams play,” said Kentucky coach John Calipari.

Sutton took Arkansas to the Final Four in 1978 (with the “triplets”) and returned to coach Oklahoma State in 1995 and 2004. Sutton’s three Final Four appearances are tied with Phog Allen, Nolan Richardson, Bill Self and John Thompson for the 21st most in college basketball history.

Sutton will be the fifth OSU representative in the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame, joining Bob Kurland (1961), Henry Iba (1969), Don Haskins (1997) and Bill Self (2017).

Sutton took the head coaching job at OSU on April 11, 1990, he inherited a Cowboy program that had made just one appearance in the NCAA Tournament in 25 years and had only seven winning seasons during that same period.

Over the next 16 seasons, Sutton led OSU to 13 NCAA Tournaments, 13 20-win seasons and seven first or second place finishes in conference play. OSU’s NCAA Tournament appearance in 2005 marked its eighth-consecutive postseason appearance, the longest streak in school history.

He coached 7 All-Americans, 52 all-conference Cowboys, five Big Eight/Big 12 Players of the Year and nine NBA Draft picks. Bryant “Big Country” Reeves, Desmond Mason, John Lucas III and Joey Graham all became All-Americans under Sutton.

Sutton began his coaching career at Creighton in 1969. That team had not produced a winning record in three seasons. He led them to five consecutive winning records, ending in a 23-7 record and a trip to the NCAA Tournament in 1974.

Sutton was hired at Arkansas in 1974 and he led the Razorbacks back to national prominence. Sutton coached the famed Arkansas Triplets – Sidney Moncrief, Ron Brewer and Marvin Delph – as well as Joe Kleine, Scott Hastings, Alvin Robertson and other Razorback greats. Sutton’s Arkansas winning percentage of .776 was the highest in the history of the Southwest Conference.

At Kentucky, Sutton won two Southeastern Conference championships, advanced to three NCAA Tournaments and was the National Coach of the Year (AP, NABC) after the 1985-86 season.

Born in Bucklin, Kansas on March 12, 1936, Sutton was a standout at Bucklin High School before attending Oklahoma A&M, where he played for Iba from 1956-58. Sutton averaged 8.1 points in 1957 and helped take down star center Wilt Chamberlain and No. 2 Kansas, 56-54. As a senior in 1958, Sutton helped OSU win 21 games and advance to the NCAA Tournament.

Sutton earned his bachelor’s degree from Oklahoma State in 1958 and a master’s degree from OSU in 1959.

Along with his late wife, Patsy, the Suttons had three sons – Steve, Sean and Scott – two of which carried on the family coaching tradition. Sean was the head coach at Oklahoma State from 2006-08 and is currently on staff at Texas Tech, while Scott spent 18 season as the head coach at Oral Roberts before joining Mike Boynton’s staff at OSU in 2017.

On top of his induction into the College Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011, Sutton has gone into the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame (1983), the University of Arkansas Sports Hall of Honor (1995), the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame (1996), the Oklahoma State University Hall of Honor (1997), the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame (2009), the Creighton University Hall of Fame and the College of Southern Idaho Hall of Fame.

The Oklahoma State and Arkansas basketball programs continue to honor Sutton to this day, with the Cowboys playing on Eddie Sutton Court and the Razorbacks practicing at the Eddie Sutton Basketball Practice Gym.

Eddie Sutton Record

1958-1959 Oklahoma State Assistant

1959-1966 Tulsa Central High School

1966-1969  Southern Idaho 84-14 (62%)

1969-1974 Creighton 82-50 (62%)

  • NCAA Division 1 Regional Third Place

1974-1985 Arkansas 260-75 (78%)

  • NCAA Final Four (1977-1978)
  • NCAA Elite 8 (1978-1979)
  • NCAA Sweet 16 (1980-1981, 1982-1983)

1985-1989 Kentucky  88-39 (69%)

  • NCAA Elite (1985-1986)
  • NCAA Sweet 16 (1987-1988)
  • NCAA Round of 64 (1986-87)

1990-2006 Oklahoma State 368-151 (71%)

  • NCAA Final Four (1994-1995, 2003-2004)
  • NCAA Elite 8 (1999-2000)
  • NCAA Sweet 16 (3 times)
  • NCAA Round of 32 (5 times)
  • NCAA Round of 64 (2 times)
  • NIT (1996-1997 and 2005-2006)

2007-08  San Francisco (interim) 6-13 (31%)

  • Total    804-328 (71%)

Arkansas – Southwest Conference Champions (1977-1978, 1978-1979, 1980-1981, 1981-1982

Kentucky  – Southeastern Conference Champions (1985-1986 and 1987-1988)

Oklahoma State – Big Eight Champions – 1990-1991; Big 12 Champions – 2003-2004