UTEP Miners

The UTEP Miners carry one of the most historically significant legacies in all of college basketball, playing home games at the arena named for their legendary coach, Don Haskins. Based in El Paso and now competing in Conference USA, the Miners' program is built on toughness and defense, the same identity that made them a national power in the 1960s. UTEP basketball is inseparable from the story of the sport itself in America.

As Texas Western College, UTEP won the 1966 NCAA national championship, defeating Kentucky 72-65 behind coach Don Haskins' decision to start five Black players for the first time in a title game — a landmark moment that helped break down segregation in college basketball. Haskins coached the Miners from 1961 to 1999, compiling 719 wins and earning induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, with his entire 1966 championship team inducted alongside him in 2007. The arena that bears his name remains one of the loudest venues in the sport.