Texas Western Basketball

Texas Western Basketball

It was 40 years ago, March 19, 1966, to be specific. America was a different place then, and basketball was a different game. A world away, African Americans were fighting and dying alongside fellow white soldiers in Vietnam. They weren’t playing basketball at many schools in the South, where segregation still reigned. Even though President Johnson had signed landmark civil rights legislation two years ago prohibiting discrimination of any kind change came slowly, even on the basketball court where ability was supposed to matter more than the color of a player’s skin.

A man by the name of Don Haskins would soon change all of this. He took the head coaching job at Texas Western University to try and turn their basketball program into a winning program. Haskins would lead his team to a 27-1 record with seven African American players and they would soon be on their way to a National Championship game. Putting five black players on the court wasn’t meant as a statement for racial equality. It was a lineup put together to win a championship game. Haskins and his Miners weren’t trying to change anything when they took the court against the University of Kentucky in the National Championship game, and the argument could be made that they really didn’t although it would be another season before a black player took the court in the Southeastern Conference, and two more after that before Kentucky’s team was integrated.

Texas Western, now the University of Texas El Paso, wasn’t supposed to make that championship game even though the Miners had lost only once and had a team so cocky that their star point guard, Bobby Joe Hill, fell asleep the afternoon of the final during a pre-game talk by Coach Haskins. He asked Bobby Joes many years later, “How could you fall asleep on me?” and Bobby Joe replied, “Coach, they weren’t