After college and a stint with the Amateur Athletic Union’s Artesia Travelers, Haskins began coaching, successfully leading some small-town high school basketball teams. He took a pay cut for a chance to be a college coach, accepting a job offer at Texas Western College (now the University of Texas at El Paso) in 1961.
In the 1950s, prior to Haskins' arrival, Texas Western recruited and played African American players, in a time when it was still common to find all-white college sports teams, particularly in the South. When Haskins arrived in El Paso, he inherited three black players from his coaching predecessor. (One of those players, El Paso native Nolan Richardson, would go on to win a national title as the head coach at Arkansas.)
The Miners reached the NCAA Tournament in 1963 and 1964 and played in the National Invitation Tournament (commonly called the NIT) in 1965. On numerous occasions, Haskins stated that he believed his 1964 team could have won the NCAA Tournament had All-American Jim "Bad News" Barnes not fouled out after playing only 8 minutes in a 64-60 loss to Kansas State in the Tournament.
The Texas Western Miners finished the 1965-66 regular season with a 23-1 record, entering the NCAA Tournament ranked third in the nation in the final regular season AP college basketball poll.
In the first round of the tournament, the Miners defeated Oklahoma City 89-74. In the next round, they defeated Cincinnati 78-76 in overtime. They went on to defeat Kansas in double overtime in the Midwest Regional Finals, 81-80, and to defeat Utah in the national semifinals, 85-78.
Facing the top-ranked University of Kentucky in the championship game, Haskins made history by starting five African American players for the first time in a championship game against Kentucky’s all-white squad, coached by Adolph Rupp. The Miners took the lead midway in the first half and never relinquished it — though Kentucky closed to within a point early in the second half. The Miners finished with 72 points to Kentucky’s 65, winning the tournament and finishing the year with a 28-1 record.
Later asked about his decision to start five African American players, Haskins downplayed the significance of his decision. "I really didn't think about starting five black guys. I just wanted to put my five best guys on the court," Haskins was later quoted as saying. "I just wanted to win the game."
Though credited with setting in motion the desegregation of college basketball teams in the South, he wrote in his book, Glory Road, "I certainly did not expect to be some racial pioneer or change the world."
Also, in his book, he wrote: "I've said this many times over the last 40 years, but for a long time I thought winning the national championship was the worst thing ever to happen to me. I wished for a long time that we had never won that game with Kentucky because life would have been a heck of a lot easier for me, my school and my players."
Texas Western's 1966 Championship Game Roster:
*Denotes Starter
+Denotes Injury
Frank Fitzpatrick, a sportswriter for The Philadelphia Inquirer and author of a 1999 book on the championship game, And the Walls Came Tumbling Down: Kentucky, Texas Western and the Game That Changed American Sports (ISBN 978-0-80-326901-9), wrote in a 2003 piece on the team,
A decade after the game, James A. Michener took several swipes at the team in his book Sports in America, calling the game "one of the most wretched in the history of American sports" and saying that the Miners were "loose-jointed ragamuffins. Hopelessly outclassed ." Michener's criticism proved to be far from reality.
In the historic game, Texas Western played only its seven black players. Four of the seven—Cager, Flournoy, Shed, and Worsley—earned degrees. The remaining three left college a semester or less from graduation, and went on to their respective careers—Artis as a Gary, Indiana police officer; Hill in sales, eventually rising to senior buyer for a natural gas company; and Lattin as an NBA draftee for the San Francisco Warriors, and then in business management, currently as an executive with a liquor distributor. In contrast, though it was not mentioned until decades later, four of Kentucky's five starters, including stars Louie Dampier and Pat Riley, had still not earned degrees by the mid-1970s.
Although Haskins was never able to duplicate his 1966 success, he is nonetheless regarded as an important figure in basketball history. Among the players he coached at UTEP over the years were future NBA all-stars Nate Archibald, Tim Hardaway, and Antonio Davis. Other UTEP alums moving to the NBA included Marlon Maxey and Greg Foster. He was also a mentor for several future coaches, including Nolan Richardson and Tim Floyd. He served as an assistant coach under Hank Iba in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich.
A street is named after him in El Paso's East side.
Bob Knight, former head coach at Army, Texas Tech and Indiana , is Haskins' fishing partner, and one of his best friends. Another good friend, Norm Ellenberger, is former coach of the New Mexico Lobos.
Glory Road, a film by Walt Disney about the then-Western Texas 1966 championship season, was released on January 13, 2006. On November 29, 2005, the City of El Paso renamed the street between its two basketball arenas "Glory Road." Adolph Rupp, Jr., pointed out that his father had previously used the term "Glory Road" in his farewell speech to his fans and worried that his father would be villainized in the film. However Director Jim Gartner stated that Rupp Sr. would not be negatively portrayed in the film, claiming that Jon Voight, who played Rupp, was careful in his role, and sought not to mischaracterize Rupp as a racist. Nevertheless, some dramatic license was taken such as a scene depicting Confederate flags being waved by UK fans. In fairness though, photographs exist of a number of UK fans in the upper bleachers waving a Confederate flag.
Haskins stated his disappointment at the cutting of the movie scenes of his one-on-one games with his boyhood friend Herman Carr, who is African-American. Carr was present in El Paso as a guest for the premiere screening, November 28, 2005. These scenes would have depicted a formative influence on Haskins' game of basketball. Haskins appeared in the movie as an "extra" by playing a gas station attendant.
Glory Road was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and was based upon Haskins' official autobiography written with Dan Wetzel, which was released by Hyperion Books in 2005. A national best seller, it was reprinted five times in its first four months of release and was selected as an "Editor's Choice" by the New York Times Book Review.
