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oWITH UNBEATEN RECORDIba's TeachingPays Off At TWEL PASO, Tex. (AP) — Take a lad with an appropriate name of Cager, another at 5-foot-6 who can dunk the ball, and recruits from the hotbeds of basketball — Indiana and New York City — and what do you have?At Texas Western, it would be an undefeated team and a national ranking.Until four years ago when Coach Don Basking, 35, started Texas Western’s basketball reconstruction, few persons outside the El Paso area had heard of the Miners. Haskins played basketball at Oklahoma State University.Ask Haskins what makes the Miners one of two major undefeated teams in the country and he says:“I think a number of things. We feel we have a better balance than before. Eight or nine can play real well. No one person is carrying the load for us. Every ball game we have a different high scorer.”A year ago when they won 18 and lest 9 and were invited to the National Invitational Tournament in Madison Square Garden, the Miners had only one player scoring in double figures.Through 12 games of the current campaign, Western has four players scoring 11.6 to 12.8 points a game and two others one-half point or less of being in double figures.Although the Miners are scoring 79 points a game—just above average in this era of high scoring—their trademark is defense. Last year they ranked fourth nationally in team defense and were in third place this season in the latest NCAA statistics with a 55.8 point per game average.It is no surprise that Western plays defense so well. Haskins played his collegiate basketball under the master of defense, Henry Iba of Oklahoma State. And Iba’s son, Moe, is an assistant coach at Western.“My basketball philosophy follows Iba’s,” Haskins say s. We go along with his defense and are a firm believer there is no better way.”Recruiting against the prestige Southwest Conference schools is one of Haskins’ major problems. Consequently, he has turned to the basketball rich northern states.Haskins, a native of Enid, Okla., says that when he came to Texas he “did not see the caliber of high school players who could win in college.” Football is king in Texas, but Haskins adds that “basketball in the state is getting close to competing with football.”The Miners rank second nationally in rebound percentage, retrieving 60 per cent of them.Harry Fourney, 6-foot-5 senior from Gary, Ind., average 12 rebounds a game and scoring leader Nevil Shed, 6-8 from New York, with a 12.8 average, is getting nine rebounds a game.There are two other players from New York — 6-5 Willie Cag-er and 5-6 Willie Worsley.44re i(ersai/
Newspaper Details
Ardmore Daily Ardmoreite
Ardmore, Oklahoma, US
Tue, Jan 25, 1966
Page 3
Full Page
Clipped by
Canton S.
OK, USA 31 Mar 2022
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