THE SIDELINES : First Olympic Hoops Coach Dies
<i> From Times Wire Services</i>
OVERLAND PARK, Kan. —
Eugene R. Johnson, who coached the 1936 U.S. Olympic basketball team to a gold medal, died Wednesday at an Overland Park hospital. He was 87.
The 1936 games, held in Berlin, were the first to feature basketball.
Johnson coached at Pratt (Kan.) High School in the mid-1920s, at Wichita State University from 1928 to 1932 and at Kansas Wesleyan University from 1937 to 1943.
From 1933 to 1937, he coached the Globe Oil Refinery Amateur Athletic Union basketball team in McPherson and the Vickers Petroleum AAU team in Wichita.
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