03/05/2022
https://youtu.be/CV3zncro0dM
1.16.21
Willie Cager’s book has been published, and it’s fascinating. He debunks many of the theories that was in the movie “Glory Road,” and other publications.
He coauthored the book with Don Park Shulte, who was born in El Paso and had a long career in education. He, too, graduated from Texas Western College.
Some pertinent points in the book:
• Some people think Willie Cager changed his name because of basketball. Actually, he got his name from his father, so he’s actually a “Jr.”
• Willie Cager Jr. was born in New York. He didn’t play basketball in high school.
• He was thrown out of high school because he beat up his teacher, something he regretted all his life.
• He was recruited not by Texas Western College coach Don Haskins, but by an unnamed El Paso banker who recommended him to Haskins after watching him in recreational basketball.
• Coming from New York City on his first flight on an airplane, he was surprised to see so much spaces and desert.
• He was surprised at how discrimination was rampant in the 1960s. He went to a barbershop and was denied service. He says he walked all the way to Alameda Street to get his hair cut.
• He was on the freshman team his first year along with David Lattin, Willie Worsley, David Palacio and a few others.
• Coach Haskins told them that he didn’t care personally but downtown people might object if they dated white girls. White girls nevertheless dated black athletes, including Caager.
• The Texas Western College players soon discovered Juarez, Mexico, and they would go there and have a good time.
• One day Bobby Joe Hill came back with a cut in his stomach. Cager: “Legendary trainer Ross Moore sewed him up.”
• Cager was the sixth man on the Texas Western College basketball team that won the national championship in 1966.
• After sitting on the bench for some minutes digesting what the opposition was doing, Coach Haskins often told him “to go get something happening,” which he did.
• He remembers the Jo Jo White of the Kansas Jayhawks vividly in one of the playoffs in the march to the Final Four. It went into overtime.
• Cager: “Jo Jo White launched a 35-shot with only seconds to go. Nothing but net.” But Jo Jo had his foot out of bounds, and the Miners won.
• The Miners lost only one game that season. That was in a frigid gym, 74-72.
• On to the Final Four. Haskins told Lattin to dunk the basket at the first opportunity as hard as he could. It worked. That rattled the Wildcats.
• Before the championship game Haskins caught Bobby Joe Hill, loose as ever, taking a nap. Haskins: “I was so angry, I took an eraser and beaned him with it.”
• But that didn’t keep Bobby Joe from stealing two balls and scoring four points.
• Cager went into the game a few minutes later and, like Haskins had told him, he did something happen. He pulled down six rebounds.
• After beating Kentucky in the championship game, 72-65, the Miners returned to a big reception in El Paso. The police guessed the crowd at 10,000 waiting at the El Paso airport.
• The Miners were toasted and revered far and wide. The movie “Glory Road” was filmed and the Miners and Haskins were inducted into the national Hall of Fame.
• Willie Cager was delighted that his family was present at the Final Four, his mother included (his father had died a few years before).
For more information, visit www.MinerAthleticClub.com today!
