Texas Western’s historic 1966 NCAA tournament title team still telling its story

For six decades, America has remembered Texas Western University’s men’s basketball victory over the University of Kentucky as a seminal racial moment in sports. What often gets lost is how badly the Miners were misread.

Before the NCAA title game on March 19, 1966, some in the majority-white press reduced coach Don Haskins’ team to a stereotype. History, too, has often molded the Miners into a symbol. But Texas Western did something simpler that night in College Park, Maryland, before becoming the first all-Black starting five to win an NCAA men’s basketball title to prove they were the best team in the country.

Unfortunately for him, Kentucky guard Pat Riley saw that immediately. The Wildcats opened in a 1-3-1 zone, a defense Riley said had carried them all season, but Texas Western attacked it with precision on the first possession. Riley was pulled to one side, the pass went up over him, and Miners’ forward David Lattin elevated.

“I went up to contest it and I got my right hand around the rim, but David caught it and that was it,” said Riley, now president of the Miami Heat. “It was a ferocious dunk. A statement dunk. Later, I believe Coach Haskins said, ‘We’re going to get Kentucky early and let them know.’ ”

Texas Western also wanted the country to see it was more than the way it had been framed: a bunch of fast, flashy Black guys who played without focus or sophistication. What Riley saw, and what the Miners still want remembered 60 years later, was something else: a team that was coached hard, played hard and understood how to break Kentucky down.

Miners guard Willie Worsley, 80, said that’s the part of the story people miss. For all the praise attached to Texas Western over the years, he said, there was always an undercurrent that the Miners were superior athletes more than superior players. 

The media coverage prior to the championship game was seen through a stereotypical lens. A Baltimore Sun article back then attributed a now-infamous line to former Lakers player and broadcaster Rod Hundley that Texas Western “can do everything with the basketball but sign it,” while another Sun writer cast the Miners as a “running, gunning” outfit unconcerned with defense.

“That’s what bothered us the most,” Worsley said. “Many couldn’t believe that you could be Black, athletic and a good ballplayer. We were one of the top defensive teams in the country.”

Texas Western’s performance against Kentucky was the complete opposite of those prejudicial beliefs. The Miners played a methodical offense and smothering defense. They beat Kentucky with discipline, defense and control.

Before the historic game, Texas Western reached the 1966 NCAA championship as one of the best teams in the country, not as some surprise underdog. Haskins left a high school job to become coach at Texas Western, now UTEP, in 1961. 

In the 1950s, Texas Western was the first school in Texas to recruit Black student-athletes. Haskins built his championship team with Black players, many from the North. Three key players came from the same area in the Bronx: Willie Worsley, Nevil Shed and Willie Cager. The other Black players were Harry Flournoy and Orsten Artis from Gary, Indiana; David Lattin from Houston; and Bobby Joe Hill from Detroit.

It was the first time many of the players had been in the South. Surprisingly, they were embraced not only by many of the white students, but also by the heavily populated Mexican community in El Paso.

“They took to us, and it was a very positive experience,” Worsley said. “[Mexicans] liked me so much that they nicknamed me Chico, probably because I was short and could look at some of them eye to eye.”

Texas Western rolled to a 27-1 record; its only loss came against Seattle. The Miners finished the regular season ranked No. 3 in the nation, entered the 22-team NCAA tournament, beat Utah in the Final Four and advanced to the championship game against No. 1 Kentucky, a four-time champion.

The national championship took place before 14,253 fans at Cole Field House on the University of Maryland campus. It was not televised live, which was common at the time. It was broadcast on a limited regional basis, and most cities saw the game on tape delay.

The magnitude of the game was not apparent at the time, but a major move moments before tipoff helped set the stage for the Miners’ victory. Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp didn’t have a player taller than 6-foot-5, the group nicknamed Rupp’s Runts. His roster was all-white, and it had been widely reported that he opposed Black players (Rupp did not recruit and sign a Black player to a scholarship until 1969). To keep up with Kentucky, Haskins countered with a change in the starting lineup. He went with a three-guard attack, replacing 6-8 Nevil Shed with 5-9 Worsley.

“I was surprised because when he said Willie, I thought he was talking about Willie Cage,” Worsley said. “My thought on the strategy was that it was the best move he could’ve made because that meant everyone from New York was going to see me on TV.”

Also visible were Confederate flags, a predominantly white crowd, officials, cheerleaders and reporters.

“When we walked out, Worsley said we looked like a bunch of flies in a barrel of buttermilk,” said Shed, 82. 

The opening lob to Lattin was a play Worsley said was designed to go right over Riley’s head. It sent the first message. The rest of the night confirmed it. Texas Western defended with purpose, helped on the back line and made Kentucky work for everything. This was not chaos. It was control.

The dunk was the first of several turning points. A series of sequences led by the defense of junior Bobby Joe Hill established the Miners’ presence. His two open-court steals followed by consecutive layups gave Texas Western a slight lead — for good. Bobby Joe led all scorers with 20 points.

It was the kind of basketball Worsley said the Miners had played all season as one of the nation’s best defensive teams. Texas Western held Kentucky to 39% shooting from the field. Riley scored 19 points but went 8-of-22 from the floor.

The celebration didn’t come easy.

“They didn’t even give us a ladder to cut down the nets after the game,” said Albert “Togo” Railey, one of the white players on the Miners. “Nevel hoisted Worsley on his shoulders to get the net cut down so they could share the net.”

Amid the celebration, Worsley, Cager and Shed had television dreams.

“We were really happy because a lot of times back then, the national champion would go on ‘The Ed Sullivan Show,’ ” Shed said. “We thought we were going back to New York on a free trip. It never happened.”

Over the years, Texas Western’s players came to see that their 72-65 victory over Kentucky had become bigger than the box score, bigger than the trophy and even larger than the program itself. They came to understand that what they did challenged long-held beliefs about who could lead, who could think the game, who could play with discipline and who belonged on college basketball’s biggest stage.

“It proved a point,” Lattin said. “Just because you’re an African American doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. And if you want to win, you better get some Black players.”

Still, it would take another 14 years before another all-Black starting five would win a national title — Louisville in 1980.

America remembers Texas Western as a racial breakthrough because it was one. But 60 years later, the men who lived it still want the full truth told. They were not some accidental symbol or one-night social statement. They were a brilliant, tough, deeply prepared basketball team that forced the country to confront its biases because they won.

“We were a little ahead of our time,” Worsley said. “It would’ve happened, but we sped it up by winning that game. Winning that game proved that we were intelligent enough not only to run and jump, but to play the game as it was meant to be played.”

The game also impacted Riley, who congratulated members of the Miners following the game. Although on the losing end, Riley knows he played a part in a pivotal moment in history. He was reminded while coaching the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1980s when his forward Bob McAdoo shared how he once believed his major-college future was restricted to the North.

“He said to me, ‘Coach, when I saw that game where Texas Western kicked your ass, I had no fear anymore, I went to North Carolina,’ ” said Riley, 81, who’d win NBA titles as a player, coach and executive. “So, it opened up the gates of integration in sports in the South, and that was the best thing that came out of that game.”

The post Texas Western’s historic 1966 NCAA tournament title team still telling its story appeared first on Andscape.