Columnist Ron Kantowski: Why ‘Glory Road’ rules, and how Don Haskins is rightly portrayed as a pioneer

Monday, Jan. 9, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's column appears on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at ron@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4088.

Back in 1985, when the NCAA still played its basketball regionals in the geographical areas of the country for which they were named, I remember watching North Carolina State practice for the West Regional at The Pit in Albuquerque when the late Jim Valvano was coach.

Maybe it was because Valvano was returning to the scene of his greatest triumph -- the rim was still vibrating from Lorenzo Charles' stuff of Dereck Whittenburg's airball in the championship game against Houston two years earlier on the very same court. But the Wolfpack's workout that day was more like an Italian wedding. Basically, Valvano entertained and regaled a nonstop stream of his paisans while his players goofed off and played H-O-R-S-E.

After the N.C. State hootenanny reconvened at one of Albuquerque's two Italian restaurants, it was UTEP's turn to practice. What a difference. Other than the occasional squeak of Converse on hardwood, the Miners shot lay-ups in total silence -- until a bear of a man, wearing blue jeans and cowboy boots, strode onto the court. Then it got even quieter and more businesslike, if that were possible.

That's my Don Haskins anecdote. If you spent any time in the Southwest, I'm sure you have your own. Down in the west Texas town of El Paso, the legend of Don "The Bear" Haskins runs longer and wider than the Rio Grande.

Oh, one last thing about that 1985 practice. Most of the UTEP players were black, although I couldn't tell you the exact number.

That wasn't the case 20 years earlier when Haskins' Texas Western team, which is what UTEP was called then, shocked the college basketball world -- and the Ku Klux Klan -- by winning the NCAA championship with five black starters.

UCLA had won the previous two titles and then the next seven, which is reason enough to remember the Miners' accomplishment.

But the biggest reason it is most remembered by social reformists as well as basketball historians is that Texas Western was the first team with an all-black starting lineup to cut down the nets.

The social relevance of the Miners' 72-65 victory over Kentucky and its all-white roster in College Park, Md., is chronicled in "Glory Road," a new movie that depicts Haskins as a pioneer which, certainly, he was.

Even if he didn't know it at the time.

He said he was just a coach at a tiny school in the Southwest trying to compete against the bluebloods the best way he could.

"They made it a big deal after the Kentucky game," Haskins said upon his induction to the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997. "That particular night, believe me, I'm not thinking about that. We got home, and all of that was a total shock to me."

In the inspiring movie, there's a scene the night before the game where Haskins, wonderfully portrayed by Josh Lucas, says he has had enough of the prejudice and inequality and announces to his team that he is going to start five black players against Kentucky.

But in reality, as Haskins has said time and again, the biggest reason he did that was to give Texas Western the best chance to win against a small and quick Kentucky team, whose biggest player was 6-foot-5.

If race was an issue, nobody was really talking about it, at least not on the night of the game. Frank Deford's Sports Illustrated cover story did not make a single reference to race.

"The (hate) mail, it started a week or two later," Haskins recalled. "To say I went in there waving the flag, that's not true. I just played my best guys, like any coach would do. There were three black players on the team when I arrived in El Paso. It's not like I started it."

Of course, it would have been easy for Haskins to follow the unspoken edict of the time in reference to black players, which is verbalized early in the movie: "Play one at home, two on the road and three if you're behind."

Haskins, who retired from UTEP in 1999 with 719 victories, never looked at it in those terms. The Texas Western championship team featured African-Americans, Caucasians and Hispanics. Black, white, brown -- if you could play defense and hit your free throws, you could play for Haskins.

Still, facts are facts, and by beating Kentucky 72-65 Haskins and Texas Western were able to break down stereotypes and open doors. Just three years later, his adversary in the title game, the legendary Adolph Rupp, recruited his first black player to Lexington. That ultimately paved the way for Tubby Smith to become the Wildcats' first black coach and win the NCAA championship in his first year at Kentucky.

That seemed to impress many of the UNLV basketball players who were on hand for the private screening of "Glory Road" at the Orleans on Thursday night.

"They were pioneers all the way around," said Wink Adams, who is black. "UTEP was the one that got the tradition going."

Dustin Villepigue, who is white, said he knew little about Texas Western's precedent-setting championship run or for that matter, that Pat Riley had been a star at Kentucky before he became a sartorially splendid NBA coaching icon.

"Those are the guys that changed the face of basketball," Villepigue said after the Rebels were treated to a history lesson, "that changed the face of America."