Floyd sells players on Miners’ rich history

EL PASO, TEXAS -- History will be celebrated here tonight, a remembrance of a team that changed college basketball forever and helped a nation distinguish skill from color, talent from race, and baskets from bigotry.

It's this sort of memory, of Texas El-Paso players wearing throwback uniforms from 1966 to honor the school's national championship team that became the first to have five black starters, that Tim Floyd believes can one day again deliver the Miners to an elite status.

"We want to get back to being relevant, back to a time when there were sellout crowds here every night," Floyd said. "Basketball has been a very important part of the fabric here for a very long time. But the interest was lost for a while. It all starts with our schedule, with playing good people that will draw a lot of interest and put us on television."

Floyd will get such a game today when UNLV visits the Don Haskins Center for a CBS Sports Network telecast, a Rebels team that arrives having won six straight, including its only two road games of the season.

Floyd is in his third year leading a program at which he was an assistant from 1978 to 1986, a coach whose ability to build winners has at times been overshadowed by his reputation for cutting corners while doing so.

The years pass and Floyd moves further away from the assertions that led to his resignation at Southern California, namely an alleged $1,000 payment to an advisor of former Trojans guard O.J. Mayo.

Further away from an undesirable reputation.

He is 43-31 at UTEP, including 3-4 this season with a team that starts a senior, three sophomores and a freshman. The Miners are younger than young in most spots.

But they have also shown an ability to draw high-level talent during Floyd's short tenure as coach, the most recent case being top-25 recruit Isaac Hamilton, a guard from St. John Bosco (Calif.) High who signed with the Miners last month from a list of finalists that included UNLV.

Hamilton's uncle played at UTEP in the 1980s and was a member of three NCAA Tournament teams, so there is a relationship between Floyd and the family that dates decades.

There is also this: In his last nine years as a college coach, Floyd has sent seven perimeter players to the NBA. His coaching staff at UTEP includes former NBA player Greg Foster and an assistant (Phil Johnson) who has worked under Floyd at several coaching stops, including with the Chicago Bulls.

"Our staff has as much NBA experience as any college program in the country," Floyd said. "That, as much as anything, interested a young man like Isaac Hamilton. That we run a pro-style offense, work out like pro teams, develop kids to reach that level. We have a history of doing so that we can point to.

"Kids pay attention to those kinds of things in this time of one-and-done players and guys declaring for the draft so early. The game is different now. They all have their eye on the next step."

It is a sales pitch that has worked well enough to have UTEP's current recruiting class ranked by some among the nation's top 10, a sales pitch that has several of the best prep and junior college players more often considering attending and playing for the university located on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Floyd sells playing time and Top 25 opponents and those NBA ties. He talks about that 1966 team of Texas Western, of that memorable, historic night, of all the other significant victories and proud moments the program has experienced since.

He sells it all and hopes it's enough.

"We have a lot of success stories to build on throughout the years, a lot of history," Floyd said. "We have great facilities. I remember a five-day stretch at USC where we played three teams that reached the Final Four that year. We want those kinds of opponents and that kind of schedule that will excite the new-generation player and our fan base.

"We are convincing (recruits) that whatever they want to do in their career, they can do so here as well as anywhere. We're going to continue going after the best players. We won't get them all, but we will get our share here, just like a Gonzaga or Memphis or UNLV has been able to."

Tonight, UTEP basketball celebrates its past.

All the while, Tim Floyd charts what he insists will be a winning future.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN 1100 and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.