By Dylan Fink | Sports Writer
Sixty years ago, the 1966 Texas Western men’s basketball team made history, becoming the first school to win the NCAA Tournament with an all-Black starting five. The team has been immortalized in countless books, on film and — as of Saturday — as the first team to be inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame.
The 1966 Miners were represented at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony by power forward Nevil Shed.
Shed played three years at Texas Western, now known as UTEP, under head coach Don Haskins. During his time in El Paso, he helped drive one of the largest shifts in the history of the ever-changing world of college basketball.
“We didn’t go out there expecting to become these figures in American history,” Shed said. “We didn’t have all the media there is today where you can see that, ‘Oh, this guy is the first to do this since whoever.’ The greatest moment to us that day was when the clock ticked down five, four, three, two, one … and then we were champions.”
The Miners claimed their national title on March 19, 1966, in an upset win against the all-white Kentucky Wildcats. The favorites were coached by four-time champion Adolph Rupp and captained by Pat Riley.
Texas Western rocked the college basketball world that early spring evening when they took the national title in a 72-65 victory over the Wildcats. Change was forever made in the sport as stereotypes fell. The win paved the way for changes that are still seen across college basketball today.
“There’s always some of this new stuff that comes up with the players now,” Shed said. “Yes, we made some of those ‘firsts,’ but at the end of the day we also just wanted to win. Because that’s what it’s all about, and today you can really see that get away from the bigger picture.”
In the modern collegiate dynamic, dominated by the perennially mutating scene of NIL payments and the transfer portal, players hold the most power over the direction of the sport since Shed and his teammates changed the world in 1966.
“With how it is now, it seems something is changing every year,” Baylor head coach Scott Drew said in January. “But again, we don’t make the rules, and as we find out about things, we’re always going to adapt to put our program in the best position to be successful because that’s what we get paid to do.”
The collegiate sporting world is forever developing, but many veterans of the realm see shifts in college basketball as positive, as long as one aspect stays at the center of the game: character.
“We didn’t have all of this media there is now where we know every player’s stats,” Shed said. “I feel that we need to go back and remove the focus from so much of that stuff and put it all back into if these guys are playing with character.”
Shed repeatedly noted how, while playing under Haskins, he and his teammates were taught to go into every game with the weight of choosing to play their hardest. To find a way to win while battling backlash and racism, all while demonstrating the highest of character.
“At the end of the day, it is all about how to win,” Shed said. “The focus should always be to find a way to win and to do so while representing your character and who you are. That’s how we won our championship and that’s why we get remembered ... Sure, the ‘firsts’ are always there, but people remember how you change something if you win and if you win with character.”
