Robert Hughes Sr. (May 15, 1928 – June 11, 2024) was an American high school basketball coach. Hughes was the United States' all-time winningest high school basketball coach from February 11, 2003, to December 7, 2010, and as of June 2024, is the most successful boys' high school basketball coach in the United States with 1,333 wins. He was passed in wins by Leta Andrews of Granbury High School in Granbury, Texas, who compiled a national record 1,416 career victories in girls' high school basketball before retiring in 2014.
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Early life
Hughes joined the Army after high school. At 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m), he was recruited for a special unit that just played basketball; it was the first integrated team Hughes ever played on. When he left the Army, Texas Southern University offered him a basketball scholarship. Playing for coach Edward H. Adams, Hughes was an All-American at Southern. He started playing for the barnstorming Harlem Magicians in 1954, and was selected by the Boston Celtics as a supplemental draft pick in the 1955 NBA draft, but he did not make the team. Hughes returned to the Magicians in 1955, and met his wife, Jacquelyne Johnson, while playing in a tournament in Memphis, but a ruptured Achilles tendon later that season forced him to give up playing basketball. He returned home to Oklahoma and attended the University of Tulsa, graduating in 1957.