John Tuft, Who Ended UW Hoop Career Early, Dies at 90

John Tuft went out, knowing he did it his way.

At a time when college basketball players were expected to be subservient to their leaders without exception, this strong-willed University of Washington guard dared to stand up to his coach Tippy Dye and walk away from the game on his own terms.

“I’ll never figure out until the day I die why Tippy Dye gave me a scholarship,” Tuft said in 2008.

That moment came a week ago for Tuft, who was 90 when he died on April 27 in a retirement community in Horseshoe Bay, Texas.

To the end, he never had a problem sharing how his Husky basketball career ended prematurely.

In 1958, Tuft found himself trying to stop a 3-on-2 Stanford fast break. He anticipated a lay-in and backpedaled, only to have the guy with the ball pull up and hit a long jumper.

The fastidious Dye, who guided the Huskies to their only Final Four appearance in program annals five years earlier, was always on him about something. He was in now his ear every time Tuft ran past the UW bench.

During a timeout, the coach grabbed him and demanded to know why he let the Stanford player score.

“They had a 3 on 2,” Tuft replied.

“No they didn’t,” Dye argued.

“Yes they did,” Tuft shot back..

“Go sit on the bench,” Dye ordered.

Teammate Bill Stady asked Tuft why he wasn’t playing. Dye pushed them apart and ordered Tuft to take a seat at the far end of the bench.

“I said, ‘I’ll go in and take a shower,’ ” he said. “I never came back.”

Eight games remained on the schedule, but Tuft was done. He pulled the plug on himself while the Huskies were beating Stanford 69-58 and Dye didn’t try to stop him.

Tuft was a guard in a center-oriented offense, a scorer often muffled and a part-time starter with an ever-changing role.

“It was very exasperating to play for Tippy Dye,” he said.

They never spoke for the next three decades. Then one day, Tuft was asked to attend a reunion honoring his old coach.

Considering how things had turned out, the one-time Husky guard found that a little odd. He asked a former teammate to check on the invitation.

“He came back and said, ‘Tippy doesn’t remember kicking you off the team,’ ” Tuft said.

The two men later would sit together and reminisce as if nothing had ever happened to cause their rift, more than once.

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