I was very disappointed we didnt go to the White House or Ed Sullivan. Haskins deserves plenty of credit for how he recruited and utilized his Black players especially guys like Bobby Joe Hill from Michigan, Harry Flourney from Gary, Indiana, Houstons David Lattin and Willie Worsley, a 5-foot-6 phenomenon out of DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, NY but Texas Western had African-Americans on the roster before he even arrived on campus. quasi-professionals imported from Northern cities to win Haskins a of Rupp's 1,066 games at Kentucky, in March of 1972, his team lost to Now hes saying this again? The Miners tried to even things with shot after shot down the stretch. The Team - University of Texas at El Paso jungle wire.". Later in his career, he signed 7-foot-2 Black center Tom Payne. If basketball ever took a turn, that was it," said Nolan Richardson, the Arkansas coach We took them out of that rhythm and they couldn'tadjust to the way we were playing them," he said. Lattin had 12, Artis and Harry Flournoy had 10 each. 1965: Miners beat Fresno State 75-73 in game 5. We wanted to carry that trophy out of there," he said. implied, needed the steadying hand of a white teammate. disciplined game of them all.". And, of course, the Miner defense was in full fury, holding South Dakota to just 23.8 percent shooting. Cager scored in the lane, was fouled and made the free throw to put the Miners up 74-70 in overtime. 1966: TWC dumps New Mexico State Aggies, 73-56. Texas Western, playing its third game in six days, traveling from Tucson to Albuquerque and back to Memorial Gym, edged Arizona State 69-67 Monday night, Feb. 14, 1966. in 1977, the old coach lamented to visitors about the loss. Worsley. On Saturday night, Dec. 18, 1965, the same two teams met again in Memorial Gym in front of 4,601 fans and a Miner team with Hill proved to be a very different team. By then, even deep-South SEC schools like Auburn and Did The Flock Sign Him Or Does He Have A New Trolling Target. have played five kids from Mars if they were his best five players.". Ray suggested The clutch victory kept the 6th-ranked Miners' undefeated season alive, improving their record to 16-0 in front of an excited crowd of 8,030 fans. Fireball seen over 4 states was not a meteor, experts say | Fort Worth Johnson was having a lot of problems with segregation and all that kind of stuff., Said Lattin: No one ever said why we didnt go, and I guess it was just read between the lines and thats the way it was. Oh, it felt like yesterday, man, Cager said about returning to Cole Field House. So, the All-American player had a front-row seat to what happened that night. The win improved the Miner record to 24-1 and propelled them into the NCAA Midwest Regional Friday night, March 11 against the University of Cincinnati in Lubbock. Even Texas Western players remain amazed theyre still remembered 50 years later. They were basketball players, who were still pretty single-minded, focused on basketball. Shed and Flournoy led the Miners in rebounding with 10 each. In fact, the nucleus had been on campus for a while, winning 18 games the year before while qualifying for the NIT in 1965. I never knew that. Texas Western romped past the University of South Dakota in the opening round of the Mississippi Valley Cage Classic Tuesday night, Dec. 21, in Rockland, Ill. It was like they just sat there, 'What are we going to write about?'". Antonio Brown Tweets Pic Of Himself In A Baltimore Ravens Uniform. Dan Koeck for The New York Times . Technical and creative licensing issues aside, the movie is important because it exposes the story of the team that endured racism and changed the face of college basketball to a wider audience, paying homage to an accomplishment that would radically alter the face of NCAA hoops. Rupp crossed paths at a sports banquet in Ohio, the younger coach nearly Contribute to The Shadow League today and help us share our narratives. "I had it pretty good," he said. Bobby Joe Hill led the Miners offensively with 19 points. As basketball lore has told a thousand times since, Texas Western did beat Adolph Rupp's Kentucky Wildcats in the 1966 NCAA championship. Haskins has been credited for being a white coach who didn't see color, for coming to Texas Western and aggressively recruiting Black players. player, Tom Payne. He cut to the middle of the court, went high just in front of the top of the circle and, on the dead run, drained the game winner. Utah's Jerry Chambers was the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player and the tournament's leading scorer with 143 points. The opening game in Wichita will pit Colorado State and the University of Houston. consecutive steals from Kentucky's guards. Significance of Texas Western's 1966 NCAA title not realized at first Fifty years ago, Texas Western started . Willie Worsley had 14, Bobby Joe Hill 13 and Willie Cager 10 points to pace the Miners. The Texas Western Miners did make history, with an all-black starting five winning the national title in 1966. Unusual for its time, the NCAA broadcast the game in black and white on TV, as the New York Times reports. A rematch between the two teams was played at 8 p.m. on Saturday, the following day, in Memorial Gym. 1961 - TWC trains the nation's first Peace Corps class. Dave Lattin played center, and his grandson plays Saturday for Oklahoma. [1] And so in that historic game that Lattinand his fellow players really didn't know was historic "we passed the ball a lot and we would shoot a lot. Quickly following Texan independence, the United States admitted Texas into the republic as a slave state. And already on the team when Haskins arrived was Nolan Richardson, who went on tobecome the first Black coach at a major university in the south at Arkansas. Lattin had 24 points, 12 in each half, and 13 rebounds. Hill made one more free throw in the closing seconds and Cincinnati's heave from past midcourt was not close. The top rebounder for the Miners was Flournoy with 11. There's not much drama, very little passion, and, in The crowd is white. In "Glory Road," the 2006 Disney movie about Texas Western, Miners coach Don Haskins tells his team the day before the championship that he will play only blacks the next night to make a social. just 38 percent. Throughout the season, the Texas Western players faced racial discrimination and bullying. In the 60s, many people believed black men would not be able to handle the pressure of playing at a collegiate level. That move by a bearish white man didn't come without controversy. On hisside of the track, literally right by the track, there was a basketball goal. "I had been listening to all this damn crap out of him," said Haskins. The two teams finished regulation tied at 67-67. 6-keys: media/spln/collegebasketball/reg/free/stories, By pressing sign up, I confirm that I have read and agree to the. The Miners improved to 7-0 on the 1965-66 season by dominating South Dakota 88-42 in the tournament's semifinals. "It was a The movie Glory Road was so loose with facts that it trivializes the long road that it took to integrate the game and turns it into a sort of a fairy tale, Chicago Sun Times columnist Ron Rapoport told NPR in 2006. Kentucky was all-white again. I told him you should write a book.. If your brains were dynamite, this place would be blown apart.. Orsten Artis had 14 points, seven rebounds and Willie Worsley had 14 points and Harry Flournoy had seven rebounds. Texas Western roared away to a 30-point halftime lead and cruised to a 93-56 victory over Loyola of New Orleans Wednesday night, Dec. 29, 1965, in the opening round of the Sun Bowl Basketball Tournament. Texas Western remained undefeated by dispatching Colorado State 72-55 Saturday night, Feb. 26, 1966, in the final home game of the season. Texas Western and Kentucky are the only two unbeaten teams remaining in the nation. Theydid it againstKentucky's all-white squad. court, he confronted his two guards about the steals," recalled Eddie Florida State. The name Texas derives from tysha, a word in the Caddoan language of the . "I kind of understoodwhat we were getting into.". But what Haskins did was key, saidRichard Pierce, a professor and historian at the University of Notre Dame. Essentially, the final game pitted Kentucky's offense against Texas Western's defense, and it was the defense that held up.". The Miners never trailed and led this game 45-21 at the half on their way to setting up a meeting with Nevada in Wednesday night's championship game. 1965: Miners outlast Weber for fourth win in row. How Texas Western's 1966 national championship changed college - NCAA The Miners led by five with 1:17 to go in regulation but Kansas scrambled back to tie it 69-69 and force overtime. One slight still bothers some Texas Western players about 1966: They didnt visit the White House and appear on the Ed Sullivan Show like past NCAA champions. The game only got significant with race being a common denominator in the growth of basketball. The Miners shot 50.8 percent from the field and held the Aggies to just 34.1 percent. Harry Flournoy had 13 points, 17 rebounds and David Lattin managed 11 points, despite fouling out with 9:26 to play. Nevil Shed led Texas Western with 23 points. As Worsleystood in the airport in New York City to fly out to El Paso, he was nervous. It didnt matter to me. Its not really a book, its more like a pamphlet, Lattin said. Watch the 1966 NCAA Championship game now and you'll Two years before Texas Western went on a 37-minute stretch hitting 26 of 27 shots in that NCAA championship game, Martin Luther King had given hisI Have A Dream speech. In 1966, two years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, SEC For example, when they won the championship no one brought out a ladder for them to cut down the net. Artis made seven-of-eight shots from the field and four-for-four from the free throw line. This is where history and Hollywood converge, and new truths become part of the story. 1966: TWC win 14th straight, sweep West Texas state. "No one will remember him without remembering us," said Texas Western's The Broncos did not pick up their last two points until making a pair of free throws with one second remaining in the game. During halftime of the Texas Western game, he reportedly referred to the Miners as coons, as ESPN reports. Willie Worsley can't disagree Haskins' starting five were the best players on the team. all-white again. "I . Artis had 12 points, seven rebounds, Shed had 12 points and Harry Flournoy hhad 11 points, eight rebounds. Texas Western defeats Kentucky in NCAA final - History I feel embarrassed by it., Lattin said Cager has talked about writing a controversial book for 25 years. Riley referred to the night as the Emancipation Proclamation of 1966.. Five minutes into the game, the Miners led 17-4. He said it was probably the worst day of his life when he lost that game, but he felt the right team won because it did so much for others. Miami (Ohio) WBB coach resigns after investigation, Texas joins Top 25 And 1 after landing Abmas, Five-star prospect Ron Holland decommits from Texas, Ranking college basketball's top 40 transfers of 2023, No. blacks at home. It was a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday" as white troopers assaulted the Black marchers, beating them with nightsticks, firing tear gas. On this date in 1966, Texas Western (now called UTEP) becomes the first team to start 5 African-Americans in the NCAA Tournament title game, beating a Kentucky team (72-65) that included Pat Riley. Texas Western held off a stiff challenge from Pan American Saturday night, Feb. 19, 1966, taking a 65-61 win in front of 1,400 fans in Edinburg, Texas. It first signedCharlie Brown in 1956. David Lattin had 16 points, 12 rebounds, Nevil Shed had 12 points, 10 rebounds and Harry Flournoy had 12 rebounds. 1966: AP rates TWC ninth in poll; Miners Defeat Tulsa. "He treated us all the same, like (expletive deleted)," said Worsley. players he did recruit -- like Kentuckians Butch Beard and Wes Unseld -- Seattle University held off the final Miner onslaught to defeat Texas Western 74-72 Saturday night, March 5, 1966, to end the undefeated season in front of 11,557 fans in Seattle. Coach Rupp was infamous for not allowing black men to play on his Kentucky team. Follow and read more from Jon Solomon on Facebook and Twitter. 1966: TWC squeaks by CSU, 68-66, for 16th straight. The shot was good but the trail official, right behind the play, signaled White was out of bounds. 2023 www.indystar.com. He called the Texas Western players "loose-jointed Haskins, who died in 2008, said he wasnt trying to make a social statement but simply starting his best players. TWC then went on an 11-0 run to take a 56-55 lead with four minutes to play. 2023 www.elpasotimes.com. [5] and inspired the book and film Glory Road. It looks more like Oklahoma City, which came into this game averaging 99.2 points per game, raced away to an 11-2 lead and led 20-9 with 13:33 left in the opening half. He loved us.". "They didn't know what to write. Seattle U. gave lone loss to Texas Western's storybook team ", This page was last edited on 26 March 2023, at 11:13. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Hill led the Miners in scoring with 15 points. 1966 NCAA tournament: Bracket, scores, stats, records Now-President of the Miami Heat, Riley explained, I just went immediately, quickly through there, said what I had to say and left them to have their moment. The further we got away from the game, the more it was talked about.. The Miners beat Kentucky (an all-white program until 1969) 7265 in the historic championship game, played on Saturday, March 19, at Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus in College Park, a suburb of Washington, D.C.[2][3][4]. All rights reserved. Winning was. Hill led the Miners with 18 points. The Rams took a two-point lead in the final two minutes but a Lattin dunk leveled the game at 66-66 with 1:28 to play. "(Lattin) said, `Take that you white honky,'" recalled Riley. The Miners, now 25-1 on the season, rallied from a 42-36 halftime deficit and were tied 69-69 with Cincinnati at the end of regulation. In a 1991 Sports Illustrated article commemorating the 25th anniversary of the game, author Curry Kirkpatrick described Haskins screaming at one of his black players, Bobby Joe Hill, and sitting him out of practice the day before the 1966 NCAA semifinals. I was completely and totally shocked, Lattin said. TWC also led by seven points in the final half but Colorado State refused to go away. No big deal. It's a regret he once heard Shed voice. 1966: TWC beats NM Aggies 104-78, win 15th. TWC improved to 11-0 on the season, leaving the Miners and the University of Kentucky as the only two undefeated teams in the nation perhaps a bit foreshadowing. ", 1966: TWC rallies to rout Oklahoma City, 89-74. The U.S. Constitution does not specifically address the secession of states, and the issue was a . But the Miners zipped quickly back and erased the lead to dump New Mexico 67-64 in an overtime affair in Albuquerque. Hill sat out the first half and the Miners led 34-32 at the intermission. Texan Jack Johnson (literally) fought his way into the white boxing world at the turn of the 20th Century. "One day, Haskinsinvited aBlack guy over to play with him," Lattin said Haskins told him. In College Park, Maryland onMarch 19, 1966,underdog Texas Western College defeats Kentucky, 72-65, in the NCAA mens college basketball finalthefirst NCAA title for an all-Black starting five. David Lattin added 11 points and Bobby Joe Hill had 10. David Lattin led Texas Western to a comfortable 74-63 win over Weber State Tuesday night, Dec. 14, in front of 3,875 fans in Memorial Gym. Your California Privacy Rights / Privacy Policy. Worsleywas a 5-6 basketball phenom, an only child raised by a single mother who cleaned the floors and bathrooms of white people's houses and workeda second job at a Chinese restaurant. Haskins contends he doesn't recall the incident, but Ray spoke of their Texas Western held on to outlast UTAH 85-78 Friday night in the NCAA semifinals in front of 14,253 fans in Cole Field House in College Park, Md. memory of that game to his grave," wrote his biographer, Russell Rice. Adolph Rupp and Don Haskins were both prejudiced, but (Haskins) decided to play the black players and he did it and, bottom line, it worked.. And yet, what Texas Western accomplished that day in March 1966slowly andquietly made an impact, a ripple effect that spread year after yearand only echoed more loudly as time passed. 2004-2023 CBS Interactive. Texas Western edged Fresno State 75-73 on Friday night, Dec. 17, 1965 with an injured Bobby Joe Hill watching from the sidelines. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. And yet, that game did more to bring a country together than those young players knew at the time. it's a wonder I didn't say something to him about it. Willie Cager scored six of Texas Western's nine overtime points to lead the Miners past Cincinnati Friday night, March 11, 1966, in Lubbock. How about that? The Miners, coming off a 21-day break for semester exams, picked up where they left off in steamrolling the Sun Devils. Flournoy led the Miners with 17 rebounds while Lattin added nine boards.