Texas Western's Streak Is Over
Texas Western was the only school in the state to boast an NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament title when they won it in 1966. That all changed Monday when Baylor University took down Gonzaga.
AILSA CHANG, HOST:
It has been a long time since a men's team from the state of Texas has won a college basketball championship - 1966, to be exact. That changed last night.
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UNIDENTIFIED SPORTSCASTER: Coach Drew and Baylor complete college basketball's greatest rebound and rebuild with a championship.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Baylor University took down Gonzaga 86-70 in the national title game. But not all basketball fans in Texas are happy about it. This is writer Roberto Jose Andrade Franco.
ROBERTO JOSE ANDRADE FRANCO: I was disappointed, I guess. You know, it's the one thing that El Paso has over Texas - that championship. And it'd been 55 years. Right before I went to sleep, my wife asked if I needed a hug or something. I guess I was showing that I was much more disappointed than I thought.
CHANG: He's talking about Texas Western's 1966 national championship, the first men's college team to feature an all-Black starting lineup. Disney even made a movie about it called "Glory Road."
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AL SHEARER: (As Nevil Shed) Coach, the more we win, the harder it is for us out there.
JOSH LUCAS: (As Coach Don Haskins) What do you suggest we do, Shed - Lose? Give them what they want?
SHAPIRO: Texas Western is now known as the University of Texas at El Paso, and Andrade Franco says that historic team is a point of pride for his city. The '66 team is inescapable in El Paso - murals around the school, people wearing the orange-and-white throwback jerseys, chrome pickaxes on the backs of cars.
ANDRADE FRANCO: You almost have the relationship of being an alumni even if you never went to that school - right? - because it's just there. You see people's - I mean, I know family members who never went to college, and they have that little chrome pick on the back of their trucks.
CHANG: The streak may be over, but that 1966 Texas Western team will forever be a part of El Paso culture for Roberto Andrade Franco.
ANDRADE FRANCO: It doesn't diminish what they did. It's still 55 years. They're still the first Texas men's team to do it. But, you know, being the only one would have been better.
CHANG: For the record, we're only speaking about the men's game. Four women's teams from Texas have won a national championship in college basketball. In fact, Baylor's women's program has three of them.
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