After the Texas Western College Miners beat University of Kentucky for the 
NCAA basketball championship in 1966, Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp was asked what he thought of Miners guard Bobby Joe Hill, who had stolen the ball twice from Kentucky guards on consecutive plays and gone in for easy layups.
Rupp replied, “He’s a good little guard, but everybody has a good little guard.”
Really? Rupp must have been awfully frustrated. Everybody has a good little guard, but not everybody has an exceptional guard. Bobby Joe’s consecutive steals still stand as one of the greatest feats in the history of NCAA championship games.
We El Paso fans know the difference. The Miners have been lucky to have seen other exceptional guards besides Bobby Joe. Like Nate Archibald and Tim Hardaway. Both went on to excel in the National Basketball Association.
AND NOW, it looks like this season’s Miners may have another of that caliber, an exceptional guard who can dominate a game with incredible quickness, ability to drive through the tiniest of holes for layups and put the ball through the basket from anywhere on the floor. Oh, yes, and play great defense, too.
I’m talking about Dominic Artis, a 6-foot-3 transfer from University of Oregon. He came highly touted but I expected nothing like what I saw in his debut with the Miners last week. He has greatness written all over him.
Folks, you’re in for quite a show at the Don Haskins Center this season.
TRIVIA QUESTION: Nate Archibald and Tim Hardaway both had their numbers retired by UTEP. Can you tell me what the numbers were? Answer at end of column.
YOU PROBABLY know that Don Haskins resigned as UTEP basketball coach after the Miners won the 1966 NCAA championship. He was offered $60,000, which was three times what he was making at then-Texas Western College, by Detroit University in 1969. He visited the Detroit school and it was a shock. The media kept referring to his 1966 players as “outlaws” and asking what the “outlaws” were doing now. They also wanted to know what it was like living in the desert, if there were any snakes and how about all those Mexicans. He was so disgusted he asked for his job with the Miners back.
His “resignation” lasted exactly one day.
But did you know that he seriously planned to resign at UTEP another time? It’s true, and it was because of Norm Ellenberger.
ELLENBERGER, who passed away Nov. 15 at the age of 83, was fired by University of New Mexico in 1979 over a recruiting scandal involving forged academic transcripts.
After his firing, Ellenberger went into business but he always wanted to return to what he loved most, coaching.
He and Haskins had become friends and Haskins was not one to turn his back on a friend.
He hired Ellenberger as his assistant in 1986. The administration didn’t like it, and let Haskins know it. Haskins became extremely unhappy. Or should I say furious? I was sports editor of the El Paso Herald-Post at the time. He told me frankly that he was so disgusted he was seriously thinking of quitting.
Luckily, the administration relented, Haskins stayed and Ellenberger helped Haskins coach the Miners the next four years.
AFTER LEAVING the Miners, Ellenberger, a friendly and loquacious man and a heck of a coach despite his troubles, found other coaching positions. He even became an assistant to Bobby Knight at Indiana and an assistant to Tim Floyd with the Chicago Bulls.
And I’m sure he was forever grateful to Don Haskins, who stood up for him in the worst of times.
ANSWER to trivia question: Archibald wore No. 14 and Hardaway No. 10.