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| Assocaited Press Thirty-eight NCAA tournaments ago, Texas Western did more than just beat Kentucky. It defeated all-white Kentucky in a title game that paved the way for widespread integration in sports. Click photo for larger image. Mississippi State got caught in crosshairs of racial conflicts |
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Forty minutes of basketball in 1966 brought Texas Western coach Don Haskins 40,000 pieces of hate mail. He also received a dozen death threats from his most vitriolic critics.
Haskins ignited this fury by playing only black players against an all-white Kentucky team in the national championship game. Texas Western won, 72-65.
While overt and closet bigots railed against Haskins, other people became inspired by his team. Court-ordered school desegregation had been moving like molasses in 1966. In this climate, Haskins' players -- seven black and five white -- stuck together like brothers and succeeded.
Texas Western sent an unmistakable message that integrated schools were coming, like it or not, and the country would not crumble because of them.
Haskins, now 74 and retired from coaching, says he was simply trying to win a game by using his best players when his Miners faced Kentucky.
He thought he had the better team, so he did not regard his victory as an upset, even if most of the country had never heard of Texas Western. The school, in El Paso, is known today as UTEP.
Haskins plays down his role in that championship season, but his players say they realize he protected them from almost all the angry letters, hurtful comments and threats to gun down the bleeding-heart coach and, perhaps, his players.
"Racism back in the '60s was truly right there," said Nevil "The Shadow" Shed, a 6-foot-8 forward on that Texas Western team. "Coach Haskins never did let us get a sense of how bad it was.
"Instead, he focused us on basketball. He was a tenacious, hard-nosed, never-say-die coach, and we played in his image."
Willie Worsley, a 5-6 guard, started in place of Shed in the championship game. Haskins never explained his reasons -- his word was the law, and players dared not question him -- but most people believed he wanted to confound Kentucky with a smaller, quicker lineup.
Worsley, now 58, said he did not understand the social magnitude of the championship game for at least 10 years.
"The older I become, the more I appreciate it," he said. "You only get one chance in life to make history."
When the game tipped off, he never thought about Kentucky being a white team and Texas Western starting five black players. Rather, Worsley said, he felt only youthful excitement. The championship game was nationally televised, and all his friends and relatives back in New York City would get to see him play college ball.
Now dean of students at Choir Academy in Harlem, Worsley has come to realize that the game had significance beyond the scoreboard.
"I can see that it opened up doors for other players and coaches," he said.
As the years rolled by, Shed made the same discovery. He said professional athletes, after learning that he was "The Shadow" they had watched in their youth, told him the championship game created breakthroughs for them.
The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered schools to desegregate in its 1954 decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. But change in matters of race never came easily in America. Texas Western, with its swift and gifted black players, helped nudge white institutions toward acceptance of the law.
"When an unknown school won with an integrated team, the elite schools had no choice but to take notice," Shed said.
Kentucky players accepted their defeat to Texas Western with grace. Pat Riley sought out the Miners to congratulate them. Louie Dampier found Shed in the postgame confusion and shook his hand.
The larger society, though, did not take Texas Western's win so well.
As Haskins celebrated his 28-1 season and national championship, he was bombarded with venom. Mean letters and threats arrived by the bundle.
"We were all in our own little niche," Worsley said. "We didn't know about all the hate mail that came to him after the championship."
Haskins had terrified his players with grueling practices that lasted as long as four hours. If their play was sloppy, he would work the team right through the dinner hour. Assistant coach Moe Iba would order sack lunches from the cafeteria while the players remained on the court.
At that stage of their lives, Haskins was the most powerful man they knew, and he seemed invulnerable.
"He didn't scream. It was more of a roar," said Shed, now an administrator of the student center at the University of Texas-San Antonio. "I would have run through a wall just to keep his mouth shut."
Only after winning the championship did players begin to realize the duress Haskins faced for using a lineup filled with black players.
The following season, Haskins received a telephoned death threat while the team was in Dallas to play Southern Methodist. Shed was so agitated by the thought of snipers that he kept darting away from team huddles.
"Nevil, would you keep still," Haskins admonished.
"Coach," he said, "if I'm a moving target, I'll be harder to hit."
Despite the threat of violence, Shed said, he never had a problem with an opposing player or fan. He remembers no racial taunting during games or after.
Coaches did not permit trash talking in that era, so players rarely spoke on the floor.
Texas Western players always were sportsmanlike, except for one glaring exception during the championship run.
"We had one knucklehead on our team who got in a fight during a game, and his name was Nevil Shed," Shed said.
It happened against Cincinnati, after a Bearcat player pulled Shed's shorts as they maneuvered for rebounding position. Shed admits now that he lost his poise and took a wild swing at his adversary. The referees ejected him from the game.
Shed felt humiliated. It only got worse when an enraged Haskins ordered him out of the building.
Shed thought he was through as a basketball player. The fight was forgiven, if not forgotten, and Shed returned to the team.
Never again would he break a rule or violate his coach's trust.
Across the years, a handful of Haskins' detractors said he exploited black kids from large cities by recruiting them to El Paso. Shed considers this a weak attempt to discredit a coach who sought players based on ability, not skin color.
"We had seven Afro-Americans on the championship team, and five of us received college degrees," he said. "We all got a lot out of school and basketball -- certainly as much as the players at Kentucky or anywhere else."
In 1969, Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp recruited his first black player, Tom Payne. By the mid-1970s, black players filled rosters of most Southern schools.
Haskins, who coached at Texas Western/UTEP from 1961-99, always had racially mixed teams. His very first group at UTEP included Nolan Richardson, who went on to coach Arkansas to a national championship in 1994.
Haskins went 719-353 for his college career. He is in the Basketball Hall of Fame for his body of work, but all of that might pale in relation to beating Kentucky.
Worsley said it's not often that a game -- any game -- has lasting significance. But, for one night in 1966, he says now, Haskins and his team were agents for social change.
