Don Haskins
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| Sport(s) | Basketball |
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| Biographical details | |
| Born |
March 14, 1930 Enid, Oklahoma |
| Died | September 7, 2008 (aged 78) El Paso, Texas |
| Playing career | |
| 1949–1952 | Oklahoma State |
| Coaching career (HC unless noted) | |
| 1961–1999 | Texas Western/UTEP |
| 1972 | United States (asst.) |
| Head coaching record | |
| Overall | 719–353 (.671) |
| Accomplishments and honors | |
| Championships | |
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NCAA Tournament Championship (1966) WAC Tournament Championship (1984, 1986, 1989, 1990) WAC Championship (1970, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1992) |
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Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 1997 |
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College Basketball Hall of Fame Inducted in 2006 |
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Donald Lee Haskins (March 14, 1930 – September 7, 2008), nicknamed "The Bear", was an American collegiate player and basketball coach. He played for three years under coach Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University). He was the head coach at Texas Western College (renamed the University of Texas at El Paso in 1967) from 1961 to 1999, including the 1966 season when his team won the NCAA Tournament over the Wildcats of the University of Kentucky, coached by Adolph Rupp.
In his time at Texas Western/UTEP, he compiled a 719–353 record, suffering only five losing seasons. He won 14 Western Athletic Conference championships and four WAC tournament titles, had fourteen NCAA tournament berths and made seven trips to the NIT. Haskins led UTEP to 17 20-plus-win seasons and served as an assistant Olympic team coach in 1972.
He was enshrined into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1997 as a basketball coach. His 1966 team was inducted in its entirety by the same Hall of Fame on September 7, 2007.
After college and a stint with the Amateur Athletic Union’s Artesia Travelers, Haskins began coaching small-town Texas high schools (Benjamin, Hedley and Dumas) from 1955 to 1961. 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).
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