Don Haskins: Difference between revisions

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'''Donald Haskins''' (born [[March 14]], [[1930]] in [[Enid, Oklahoma]]) is an [[United States|American]] former collegiate [[basketball]] [[coach (sport)|coach]]. He was the head coach at Texas Western College (now the [[University of Texas at El Paso]]) from 1961 to 1999, including the [[1966 in sports|1966]] season when that school's basketball team won the [[NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship|NCAA basketball championship]] over the Wildcats of the [[University of Kentucky]], then coached by hoops legend [[Adolph Rupp]].

This event had societal implications well above its sporting ones. Texas Western had been recruiting and playing [[African American]] players in the [[1950s]], when no schools in the [[Southeastern Conference]] or the former [[Southwest Conference]] would offer them athletic scholarships. When Haskins arrived in El Paso, he had inherited onethree black playerplayers, one of them future [[University of Arkansas|Arkansas]] coach [[Nolan Richardson]], from his coaching predecessor. Haskins recruited and played black players to an even greater extent. Rupp, conversely, was largely regarded as being a supporter of [[segregation]], or at least very reluctant to recruit black players. The game was played on national [[television]], and to the confoundment of pundits, Haskins chose to play an all-black starting lineup; the team defeated Rupp's all-white one. (However, the game was not as large an upset as was often depicted after the fact; Texas Western was in the top five of that season's final polls.)

This game did much to change the perception of African-American athletes and to speed the [[desegregation]] of intercollegiate sports. It probably hastened the name change of Texas Western College as well; because of the basketball team, many persons erroneously concluded that Texas Western was an [[historically black college]], perhaps confusing it with [[Texas Southern University]]. In any event, the school's name was changed to the Univerisity of Texas at El Paso the next year.