Former Tide Basketball Player Zeke Kimbrough Has Died
1/25/2007 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
TUSCALOOSA ?? William “Zeke” Kimbrough, an All-Southeastern Conference forward who lettered on the University of Alabama’s 1932, 1933 and 1934 teams, including its 1934 Southeastern Conference regular season and tournament champion teams, has died. He is believed to have been 92.
Alabama’s 1934 team, coached by Hank Crisp, went 16-2 overall and 13-2 in the SEC. Kimbrough led the SEC in scoring for most of the 1934 season until he broke his jaw at practice as the team was preparing for the SEC tournament, and had to have surgery, causing him to miss playing in that 1934 SEC tournament.
“I am proud that I was privileged to be one of Coach Hank’s Boys,” Zeke Kimbrough wrote in a tribute to his Alabama coach, the late Hank Crisp many decades later. “He had a greater influence on my life than any man other than my father.”
Though his health was declining and he was in his eighties, Kimbrough returned to Tuscaloosa in August of 1999 to attend the University of Alabama’s “Basketball Legends Weekend,” a gathering of Alabama’s basketball players past and present arranged by Mark Gottfried who had just finished his first season as Alabama’s head coach.
“I was an honor and a pleasure to meet Zeke Kimbrough that weekend,” said Gottfried. “He was the oldest former player who had come back for the reunion, and he had a great time. And I know we all had a great time meeting with him and seeing how much Alabama and Alabama basketball meant to him. He was an inspiration to all of us. He is what we try to make our program about: quality men who play like champions and are quality citizens, quality individuals.”
Alabama went undefeated at home, 26-0, the three seasons he lettered. In 1932, Alabama finished 16-4 overall and was 14-5 overall and 12-3 in the SEC, good for second place, in 1933.
His brother, Ed Kimbrough, played for Alabama in 1930, 1931 and 1932 and helped Alabama win its first SEC Championship in 1930, going a perfect 20-0 overall. The brothers were originally from Opelika. After graduating from Alabama, in the fall of 1934 Zeke Kimbrough became the football and basketball coach at Piedmont High School. He left Piedmont High in the fall of 1937 to become the football and basketball coach at Sylacauga High School, though he would return to Piedmont in 1942 as the Superintendent of Schools and Piedmont’s principal. In 1945, he was called back to the sidelines because of staffing shortages due to World War II and coached the Piedmont football team to an 8-0 record that season. He also taught chemistry, physics and served as the band director that year. He was living in Montgomery when he died.
