Bill Gibbs was coaching basketball at Fairborn (Ohio) High School when newly appointed head basketball coach Ray Mears hired him as an assistant in 1962. Gibbs received the bachelor’s (1951) and master’s (1952) degrees from Miami of Ohio and then coached at Paninsville (Ohio) High School in 1952–53. He then coached at a high school near Milwaukee for four years before taking over at Fairborn. Mears and Gibbs had met at Miami and had kept in touch as each pursued coaching careers.
Mears became physically and emotionally ill early in the 1962–63 basketball season, and Gibbs served as acting head coach, beating Kentucky both at home and away and beating league leader Auburn 55-47. Mears returned to full duty in 1963–64, and Gibbs resumed the assistant role.
On the morning of February 3, 1964, Gibbs left the UT traveling party at its motel in Gainesville, where the Vols were to play Florida that night. He had given his scouting report on the Florida team and went to scout the Auburn team. The small plane in which he was riding, a shuttle connector between Jacksonville and smaller Florida airports, lifted no more than one hundred feet off the runway on takeoff. Bill Gibbs and the eight other people on board were killed on impact. The Yale Avenue Dormitory was renamed Bill Gibbs Hall in his honor shortly after his death.