Creative Writing: Texas Western Miners

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I am Moe Iba, the assistant coach and recruiter for the Texas Western Miners basketball team. This being my first job since finishing college, I've been ambitious and ready for any task thrown at me. Or so I thought. About a year and a half ago, both Head Coach Don Haskins and I joined this program at the same time, and we faced many financial problems which made it impossible to recruit anyone to our school. All the decent players wanted to play for a well known team, and Texas Western hasn't been heard of for years. I was feeling hopeless, but Coach Haskins had an idea that would change basketball forever: He wanted me to go out and recruit seven black basketball players. Recruiting black players in the middle of the 1960s? Surely this …show more content…

Kentucky’s Riley jumped before the ball was even thrown in the air, so we were given possession. Right away Coach Haskins told our big man David Lattin to throw down vicious dunks in order to send a message. And my goodness, did he! First time he got the ball, he seemed to stuff his armpits inside that rim! But we knew Kentucky wasn't just going to give us this victory, they've been here before, they know what they're doing. David Lattin ended up committing a foul on the Wildcat’s first possession. He needs to be smart! We need him. The game was about dead even until our star player Bobby Joe Hill had two consecutive steals and scored on both of them. The look on Adolph Rupp’s face was priceless. Before the game, he couldn't say one positive thing about Bobby Joe Hill, even acted like he didn't know who he was! Now Bobby is making Rupp’s guards look like JV! Our defense was doing a great job of getting a hand in the shooter’s face, and on offense our ball movement was superb. There were many possessions where we passed it 10 times before shooting. Going into halftime, we were up 31-28. The second half started out as a close one. The first three minutes Kentucky rallied to within a point of us, even tying us, but never got the lead from us. We eventually kept drawing fouls and ended up shooting 27 free-throws, making all but one. We had a nine-point advantage and we were able to control the pace until the final

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