| Wins against Kentucky - 2 | Losses against Kentucky - 8 |
Alma Mater: Southern California [1953]
Date Born: June 8, 1930
Date Died: January 14, 2015
Overall Record: 342-281 [23 Seasons]

Obituary - New York Times (January 17, 2015)

by Richard Goldstein

Bob Boyd coached the University of Southern California to more than 200 basketball victories and three Top 20 national rankings in the 1960s and '70s. But he was a victim of unfortunate timing.

Boyd was among the most successful coaches in U.S.C. basketball history, but when he died on Wednesday at his home in Palm Desert, Calif., at 84, he was remembered as well for having collided with college basketball's greatest dynasty, the reign of Coach John Wooden at U.C.L.A.

"I was at the right place at the wrong time," Boyd once told The Los Angeles Times. "For the majority of years that I was in the crosstown rivalry, the crosstown teams kept winning national championships."

Boyd had 11 winning teams in his 13 seasons at U.S.C. and sent 10 players to the N.B.A., most notably the guards Paul Westphal and Gus Williams, both of whom went on to All-Star careers.

He posted a 216-131 record at U.S.C., but his teams went 2-25 against their unrelenting Los Angeles rival.

The first time Boyd's Trojans faced U.C.L.A., in the 1966-67 season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (then Lew Alcindor), a sophomore playing in his first collegiate game, scored 56 points. Boyd's first nine seasons at U.S.C. coincided with Wooden's last nine at U.C.L.A., when Wooden coached eight N.C.A.A. tournament champions.

Boyd's Trojans did hand the Bruins their first two losses at Pauley Pavilion. The first one, a 46-44 victory in March 1969, aided by slowdown tactics, ended a 41-game U.C.L.A. winning streak. The second one came in 1970.

Boyd's 1970-71 team was ranked No. 1 nationally by The Associated Press at one point during the regular season and finished with a 24-2 record and a No. 5 ranking. But the Trojans failed to make the N.C.A.A. tournament, which did not include at-large entries at the time, and U.C.L.A., whose only loss that season was to U.S.C., had won its conference championship.

Boyd's 1973-74 team also won 24 games but missed the N.C.A.A. tournament because it could not beat out U.C.L.A. in conference play.

His Trojans reached the 1973 National Invitation Tournament, losing in the first round to Notre Dame. They finally made it to the N.C.A.A. tournament in 1979, when they were eliminated in the second round by DePaul in a West Regional game, fittingly enough at Pauley Pavilion.

William Robert Boyd was born on June 8, 1930, in Alhambra, Calif., near Los Angeles. He played center for U.S.C. in the early 1950s and was a teammate of Bill Sharman, a future Hall of Fame guard with the Boston Celtics.

After coaching in high school and in junior college, he became the head coach at Seattle University in the 1963-64 season and took his team to the N.C.A.A. tournament, where it was eliminated by a Wooden-coached U.C.L.A. squad in the second round. He left Seattle with a 41-13 record after two seasons.

After his years at U.S.C., Boyd coached for five seasons at Mississippi State, but had only one winning team. He was later head coach at Riverside City College and Chapman University, both in Southern California, and was an assistant coach at Utah State and Louisiana State.

His 216 victories at U.S.C. rank No. 3 on the university's coaching list, behind Sam Barry and Forrest Twogood.

Boyd's son Bill, who played for him at U.S.C., said his father appeared to have had a heart attack. Boyd is also survived by his sons Jim and John and 10 grandchildren. His wife, Betty, died in 2013.

"I always rationalized the fact that we may not have been beating U.C.L.A.," he told The New York Times in 1983, "but no one else was beating them either."

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