Charles “Jock” Sutherland, the legendary high school basketball coach who led six teams at three schools to the Boys’ Sweet 16 and took his alma mater, Lafayette, to the state championship in 1979, has died at the age of 95.
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| Jock Sutherland (1928-2023) |
Sutherland retired from coaching after the 1979 championship, but he capitalized on his notoriety as one of the commonwealth’s most outspoken basketball personalities by later becoming the radio color analyst for the University of Louisville’s men’s basketball team, a post he held for 19 years with Louisville’s WHAS-AM station.
“He was truly genuine and a guy who absolutely adored high school basketball and the Sweet 16 specifically. It was only natural that when he retired, Ralph Hacker hired him at WVLK to work games with us,” said UK Sports Network’s Dick Gabriel, who hosted WVLK’s “Sports Line 59” where Sutherland got his second career going.
“I learned as much about life from Jock as I did basketball because it seemed like he experienced everything.”
“Jock could spin a yarn better than a Harlem Globetrotter could spin a basketball,” said Mike Fields, a longtime Herald-Leader high school sportswriter.
“He embellished more than a few of his stories, but he didn’t need to embellish his coaching ability.”
Kentuckey.com reports Sutherlande was inducted into both the Kentucky Sports Hall of Fame and the Dawahares/KHSAA Hall of Fame. Retiring after his greatest coaching achievement in leading Lafayette to a 36-1 record and the 1979 state championship, Sutherland explained, “I was the worst high school basketball coach in the world my first game at Gallatin County. The last night I coached at Lafayette, I was the best. I went from the bottom to the top, so I figured that was a damn good time to quit.”
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