Ernest Blood

Ernest Artel Blood (October 4, 1872, Manchester, New Hampshire – February 5, 1955) was a high school and college men's basketball coach. He was best known for his "Wonder Teams" at New Jersey's Passaic High School, which lost only one game in the span of a decade and set an American high school record for most consecutive victories.

As a basketball innovator who focused on team play and a clean lifestyle in which players were prohibited from drinking or smoking, Blood emphasized the fast break, well-controlled passing and the full-court press over individual performance. Known as the "Professor", he was also a showman who would wrestle the team's bear cub mascot at halftime and could toss a 16-pound shot put into the air and catch it on the back of his neck. The streak ended on February 6, 1925, after Blood had already left Passaic High, in a game the Hilltoppers lost 39–35 to the Hackensack High School Comets. The game, played at the Hackensack Armory, was said to have been designed to slow down the Passaic High fast break through the placement of sawdust on the playing surface.

He won a grand total of 1,200 games over the span of his 50 years in basketball, coaching YMCA, high school, prep school and college teams. In recognition of all of his accomplishments as a basketball coach, Blood was one of ten individuals inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts with the class of 1960, the second year of the Hall's existence (in the same class with John Wooden, who was initially enshrined as a player and only later as a coach). from a cerebral hemorrhage.