Medicine Man-Part 2

Settling back into his chair like a riverboat gambler, Coach Binder drawls, "Now, this one goes back a little bit. This was actually when I was a student trainer working for UTEP back in the day. This was of course, back in the early seventies when I was working with coach Don Haskins and his team. Coach Haskins back in the seventies...man, what can I say? I mean, I was working with a bigger-than-life legend even way back then!

For instance, I can still remember being back in his locker room at the end of one particular game. I don't remember whether we won or lost, but we had probably won it since we were at home. Anyway, coach Haskins came into the locker room that night and grumbled, 'Man, that Brewster just played a horrible game tonight...just terrible, terrible, terrible!'"

Are you talking about UTEP Hall of Famer Gary Brewster, maybe the toughest Miner that ever lived?

"That's the one," quips Dave. "Well anyway, some assistant coach piped up and said, 'That's right coach. He had turnovers and he did this, he did that and...'

Well, coach Haskins stopped that guy right in the middle of his speech - I think it was assistant coach Gene Iba, and Haskins bellows out, 'You know, he didn't play that damn bad!' And that pretty much silenced the entire locker room."

"That was the whole thing about Don Haskins," a still laughing coach Binders says. "You just needed to keep your mouth shut whenever he was talking about one of his players. I saw that same kind of thing happen many other times while I was around him.

Now, coach Haskins himself, he could be extremely critical of any player, but nobody else could, period. Nobody in the media and nobody anywhere else could say something bad about one of his players. To him, They were his players and he felt that the only one who had the right to be critical of them was himself. He took coaching those kids very, very seriously."

"Yeah, but I think he did it for a reason," Binder relates. "I think that he did it as a test. He would test his young assistants and the other people around him. I think that he would make a statement like that, in order to make them all perform better. I mean, he would just embarrass them - in front of everybody!"

I wonder what he would make of society today, where all of the news is instant, and many of the fans think of themselves as some sort of an expert on the game. On the Internet for instance, a player or coach can almost be crucified minutes after the game.

"He probably would not give damn about those kinds of things," Binder asserts. "Like Harry Truman before, he knew where the buck stopped. Whenever I hear people in the media or online, be critical of an 18 or 19 or 20 year old kid, they really don't know what the hell they are talking about. Just because they bought a ticket and went to a game or whatever.

The only one who really knows those kids is the head coach. And he knows all about those kids. Just a ton more than anybody else. Coach Haskins took coaching them to heart and very personally."

Naismith would have been proud. I think that all of those old guys maybe had a pipeline into something pure that has been lost to the game.

"I sometimes think so too Jimmy." Coach Binder agrees, "But Coach Haskins could be somewhat of a trickster as well. You know, Coach always had this one rule for the team that never changed. And he sometimes went to unusual methods to prove his point. Now don't get me wrong, Haskins was a tough, old guy in those days. No water breaks during practice and things like that. Occasionally though, he would really throw us a curve ball."

Smiling at the memory, Coach Binder replies, "His rule was simply this: Everybody had to touch the ball before anyone shot the ball. There was no shot-clock back then, so you could pass the ball around forever if you wanted to, but that wasn't ever his intention. He just wanted everyone to touch the ball and to then start looking for the best shot available."

"Exactly," Binder says. "Now on this one team that we had, a kid named Ron Jones was one of the guards on that team. Well, Ron Jones never met a shot that he didn't like. Anytime that he felt that he had an open shot, he would just take it no matter what the situation.

Coach Haskins would see this and simply go nuts! He would just get so pissed off, yelling and slamming his clipboard down on the court!

But here's the kicker: Coach Haskins' office was in memorial gym and one day he had all of us assistants go into his office and carry out a sofa that he had in there, along with a folding chair. He then directed us to take them down to the court and leave them there."

Shaking his head and laughing, coach says, "I will never forget the sight of that bright, orange sofa down there on the court! Well, to make a long story short, he made Ron Jones lay down on that sofa. Coach Haskins then sat down in the chair beside him and with a yellow legal pad on his lap, began to 'psychoanalyze" Ron in front of the whole team!

Coach said things like 'Ron, do you hate your mother?' and on and on. You see, he was acting like a psychiatrist to try and figure out what was wrong with this kid. Now, coach was only being half serious of course, as he often did that kind of thing to break up the monotony of practice. Now - once again, nobody else could have claimed that Ron was shooting the ball too much except for coach Haskins. The players all knew that he had their backs when it came to everyone else, and so when he barked at them and tried to teach them new things, they always listened."

That toughness never manifested itself better than it did in 1966, when Don Haskins and then Texas-Western won the National Championship in college basketball.

That he did so with an all-black starting lineup for the very first time in history, against Adolph Rupp and his all-white Kentucky Wildcats, was the kind of thing that broke down barriers in collegiate sports and moved the Civil Rights movement right up into the forefront of amateur and professional athletics.

Don Haskins never saw it that way, however. In fact, he was kind of embarrassed to be known for doing something that he saw as just doing the best thing to give his team a chance to win. In the wake of that criticism, he often came to regret that magical season, although never the athletes whom had ultimately prevailed in the game.

Don Haskins can be forgiven, if he never saw the coup d'é·tat that he pulled off in 1966. Far from the Glory Roads of El Paso or the glitter of Hollywood, Enid, Oklahoma was the birthplace of a lesson that they never taught in school back then.

Carr was the best player in town. He could score, he could pass and he could play defense. Herman Carr could do it all. Yet the stories in the paper were all about Haskins and his games. They were calling Haskins an All-State player, maybe even an All-American. The future coach could never understand the discrepancy.

"We played a lot of one-on-one," Haskins told ESPN by phone from El Paso. "We found out at a young age that there wasn't much difference between us, except for color. Well, one day we went to the fountain in front of the feed store to get a drink. And there it said, 'coloreds only,' and 'whites only.'"

"That was a hell of a note, that he couldn't drink from the same fountain as me."

So much so, that the Haskins, who were missionaries, were pressured by their neighbors and others to keep the boys apart. His parents didn't listen and allowed the two boys to remain friends. His opinion of blacks was formed through his relationship with Carr and it was pivotal to his later coaching decisions. " -Co-captain of the 1966 NCAA Championship Miners, Harry Flournoy to the El Paso Times

"I wasn't around during that season of course," Dave says, "but I knew those guys - every single one of them. All of those guys were simply great guys. During the subsequent years, all of them would come by to visit and during the season and coach Haskins would always talk about them.

Bobby Joe Hill passed away many years ago, of course. But I can still remember Bobby Joe coming out to practice, with coach Haskins stopping practice and saying that there was only one guy who could dribble like this. There was only one guy who could pass like that.

Then he would point up into the stands at Bobby, and say, 'That kid right up there, he was the one - he was the best.'"

"Now, he really loved those guys," coach emphasizes. "And they would always come back to visit him from time to time because they knew that he did. And they were all just the nicest people that you could ever meet, I want to tell you.

Despite any later misgivings due to the hatemail and stuff, I know that he was always very proud of what that team was able to accomplish and maybe even more so of what they were able to do as adults later on. But like he always said, he was just doing what came natural to him as both a coach and as a human being."

When Dave Binder first received his Masters Degree back in 1975, he did what most young men do and decided to stretch his wings a bit. He first took a job at MacArthur High School in Irving, Texas. A year or so later, he became the Head Athletic Trainer for Houston Baptist University and later on, was the head man at Pan American University. Shortly thereafter, he went on to work with the Toronto Blue Jays down in Utica, New York.

I just had to ask him, what was it like working with professional athletes instead of amateurs?

"Well, it wasn't what you'd think!" a laughing Binder exclaims. "Heck, you may not even want to print this!"

Wearing his best poker face, Dave raises an eyebrow and continues, "Well, you asked for it. So when I first got down to New York, they had maybe three or four Americans with most of the kids being from the Dominican Republic."

Well, that had to be pretty cool, since many of the best players from the last forty or so years came from that country.

"Yeah, but I can't take any of the credit for that," Coach Binder replies while barely holding back his laughter. What I can take credit for though, is in teaching them how to use the toilet."

"No, not at all," Coach Binder says with the utmost seriousness. "Again, you just don't know what to expect with other people. Now those kids would use the toilet, but instead of throwing the toilet paper into the toilet, they would just throw it on the floor.

After way, too much of this, I took them into the bathroom and showed them what they were supposed to do with it. It was a cultural thing, I guess. I mean, some of those kids were pretty young. Some of them were probably just sixteen or so."

"Kids lie about their ages all the time to get into the Major Leagues," he says. "It is practically a tradition. Still, they were all just young kids and probably didn't understand the customs and a lot of that stuff. But I certainly enjoyed my time over there with that organization. You know, I never had a job that I didn't enjoy!"

UTEP Hall of Fame athletic trainer Ross Moore passed away in 1977 after almost a lifetime of service to the university. Soon afterwards, his chosen apprentice in many ways - Dave Binder, would return to the university and attempt to follow in his mentor's footsteps.

Shifting in his seat and looking somewhat pensive, Coach Binder begins with, "For sure, I came back to El Paso. It was almost like a duty to me, but it was also the only job that I had ever really wanted."

"Thanks for that," Binder says, "but I don't think that anyone will ever follow in that man's footsteps. However, I think that there is a story about that which will help explain Don Haskins a little better. Now, Haskins was a tough, old coach for sure. You always see these articles on him about how his players all hated him during their playing days, but came to love him like family after they graduated."

"Well, they were all true," Dave laughs. "But he also had such a great capacity for caring about people, yet it wasn't as well known. You know, back when I was just the student trainer for the team, I had always sat in the first seat. In the second seat had been Moe (Ross Moore), with Coach Haskins taking up the third and so on.

When I came back to UTEP that first season as Head Athletics Trainer, seat number two on the bench was now being left empty. Coach had never explained this to us, nor had anybody on the team or in the media ever really had the nerve to ask him why.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, ever sat in the second seat for the remainder of his career."

"Of course they are," Binder laughs, "but Coach never denied nor confirmed those rumors. He was like that, you know. He had loved Ross Moore, just as I did. I believe that Coach Haskins saw Moe as a kindred spirit, as they had both been around the program together for so long and had been through so much together.

The reason that I bring that story up, is because Coach Haskins never welcomed the limelight of that '66 championship and in fact, he sought to avoid it. He hated that stuff. He just did what he thought was right in life, both on the court and off the court. And that is why he never explained that empty seat. It was between Moe and himself...period. If someone else tried to trumpet those types of things, he felt that they only diminished it. That is why he always kept his feelings to himself on such matters and never commented or tried to explain those types of things."

"You probably don't want to know what I think about that," Coach Binder laughs, "but as tough as he was as a coach, Don Haskins was a very sensitive and caring man off of the court. Now, you know that Coach Haskins liked to hunt, right? Well, I have been fortunate enough to go out quail hunting and coyote hunting a few times with him through the years.

But on this one occasion that I want to tell you about, he had went out with his assistant coach Tim Floyd and they were planning to hunt quail. Somewhere near Fabens Texas, coach notices a car stopped by the side of the road. They had been heading to California and they had a little kid with them inside."

"Coach Haskins pulls over, and after seeing their predicament, went back to Fabens and got them a tow truck. He then had their car pulled in and tells the service station guy to fix their car and to bill him for the repairs. He then left some money for the parents and the baby to eat with.

He basically paid for everything. Now, he didn't tell them that, but he paid for everything. That was the kind of a person that he was. He would take the shirt off of his back and give it to somebody who needed it. He would have gotten along great with people like you and me. He didn't grow up to hang around with the rich or popular guys. He would rather shoot the breeze with people like us."

"He would just do so many other wonderful things on the sly," Binder continues with obvious affection. "Here we are, on a Thanksgiving day weekend, and I am recalling all of the wonderful things that Coach Haskins would do for people this time of year. For instance on Thanksgiving day, coach would always bring a ton of food to the homeless shelters in town.

Now, nobody ever really knew about that and to this day they probably still don't, but that is exactly what he did.

He didn't want that stuff in the papers - he really didn't want anyone to know. Just like helping that family by the side of the road, it would have made big headlines everywhere -on ESPN and all of the others. But it would have only cheapened things in his mind. That was just not the kind of person that he was and so he never talked about those sorts of things with anyone."

There has been a legend floating around for years, that Don Haskins got his nickname "The Bear" because he once shot a bear that was uphill from where he was. Now, ask any hunter, and they will tell you that is a big mistake. When the bear fell, it began rolling down hill - 'chasing' Haskins, who barely got out of the way in time. While a great story, it was not the real reason why Coach Haskins got his nickname, is it?

"No, it is not," a smiling Binder concurs. "He actually got it from a media guy by the name of Eddie Mullens. Eddie had seen a picture of Haskins with his arms raised, and decided to call him 'The Bear.' Coach Haskins hated it, as far as I ever knew. But it stuck. Boy, did it ever.

And about that so-called 'legend' you spoke of, it really did happen. Don had in fact, gone to Alaska and shot a bear uphill. He even ended up getting that bear stuffed. Now, I don't know where that bear is anymore, but that had to be dumbest, damn thing that he ever did! Shooting a bear right up in front of him on a hill and then seeing it roll down after him (Dave starts laughing so hard, that his narrative on the subject soon comes to an end)."

"That was a tough one," Binder agrees, lowering his head. "Nobody saw that one coming. Back in those days, we used to travel in cars together to the games. That kid was always in my car for four years. I loved him and he was just a great kid. I will always remember him with this permanent smile upon his face, and it really hit coach (Haskins) and myself hard when he died."

Now, Jeep had certainly been a free spirit at times, and had tested the old coach often during his four seasons at UTEP. But make no mistake about it, Haskins loved him.

The thing I will remember most about Jeep though, was seeing him running up into the stands to hug his mom and dad after our final home game."

“You know, you usually coach the way you were coached,” Haskins continued, alluding to his former coach Hank Iba. “I never liked my guys talking or laughing in the locker room before a game. We never did before. But with Jeep it was different. At first, it bothered me. I’d go in there and he’d be slapping hands with everybody, grinning ear-to-ear. But he really got the guys ready to go, so I never said anything to Jeep about that. I couldn’t."

"That kid," Binder says shaking his head and somehow laughing and fighting back tears at the same time, "He was one of a kind. I can still remember coach really getting on to him at practice. Coach would yell at him and correct him all the time.

Now, Jeep was respectful all the while, but he always had a smile on his face. I will never forget that. Sometimes during a game he would make a mistake, and be getting ready to sit down on the bench before coach even had a chance to call a time-out!"

"Aw, they all know me out here," Haskins said as he puttered around the sand, in and out of two countries.

The Bear loved to tell a story about how he and his buddies, Bob Knight and Norm Ellenberger, were fishing down at the Chama river in New Mexico on this one occasion. He had waded out to look for some fish and just as he cast his line out, had fallen into (as he described it) "a very deep part of the river with a fast moving current" and had almost drowned (according to him). Haskins went on to explain that every time he broke the surface "coming up for air" to keep from being carried downstream, he saw Ellenberger and Knight over on the shore laughing their asses off.

I reckon the last part of the story is probably true. Ellenberger himself, admitted to the laughter, but said that the water Haskins fell into was no more than "knee deep."

If you are a fisherman, I think that you will understand the discrepancies. Just as you would also understand that one year when Indiana played UTEP down in El Paso, the coaches decided that they would switch uniforms. Bob Knight came down at the beginning of the game, dressed in a big cowboy hat, bolo tie and matching boots. His buddy, Don Haskins, came down to the floor dressed in a bright orange sweater covering his rather substantial frame.

Now, that story about their fishing trip certainly doesn't portray the image that most fans have in their minds of these three. But it wasn't an uncommon occurrence whenever one of them would get together with the other. For instance...

Texas-El Paso and New Mexico were locked in a tight one several years back when Miners Coach Don Haskins was hit with a technical. At the other bench, Norm Ellenberger, then coach at New Mexico, felt compassion for his friend and compatriot.

'It don't look any better from this end,' Ellenberger said of the officiating. 'Let's switch places.' They did, at least for a while, says Irv Brown, once the league's top referee

In 2006, Don Haskins invited a special guest and old friend onto his radio show in El Paso. That old friend was Norman Ellenberger, and they revisited that old story, as well as a few others.

Commenting on his hiatus from college basketball after the New Mexico years, Ellenberger told the audience, "I needed help back then after the deal down in New Mexico, and Don really bailed me out. And as I look back upon it now, they were four of the best years of my life."

Haskins: "I’ll tell you what Norm, what a help you were to me. That year I had laryngitis (1989), and you had to leave on an airplane and go coach, I could still shoot my shotgun without talking. You’d go to the airport and I’d go quail hunting!" (both coaches laugh)

"And speaking of New Mexico, do you remember that time I got called for a technical down in the Pit? Here you came running with all of your beads a-jangling and stuff down to the court. (laughter erupts in the studio)

Well, Norm just wanted to make damn sure that I didn't get the officials on my side. So, I just left him standing down there with the officials and his president down at New Mexico back then (asking Ellenberger) -Doctor Davis wasn't it?"

"Well, Dr. Davis was kind of flabbergasted when I went and sat down on the bench beside him. Then Norm went over and sat on our bench. Pretty soon though, Norm came over and told me 'I think that I like this bench better as we are winning by ten.'"

Ellenberger: "Well I hadn't been too happy with the play calling either, so I went down to his bench and took a seat. Suddenly, Haskins is jumping off of my bench and trying to get a technical foul called on me! Well, that got my attention in a hurry, so I ran back down there and shooed him back to where he belonged!"

Announcer: "You two had so many great games together, both on the opposing

sidelines and on the same one. Which ones were the best?"

Ellenberger: "Those four years that I spent with him in El Paso were probably the greatest time. Playing against him, well you had better have all of your ducks in a row because he would eventually figure out a way to beat you.

You know, one of the greatest compliments that I think Don Haskins could ever receive comes right from the Lobo fans. Back in those days, every soul in that stadium was a Don Haskins fan. They really loved him and would root for him every time -although maybe not exactly for his team."

Haskins: We had a great relationship. I know that a lot of coaches didn't like to play there, but I loved it. I will never forget the time the the fans started throwing coins down on the floor. Well, maybe they didn't like me all that well! (laughing)

Anyway, my trainer Ross Moore started picking up the coins. I noticed that he was missing a few, and he told me that he was only picking up the quarters, dimes and nickels. He was leaving the pennies."

Announcer: "Norm, before we let you go, what is your favorite Don Haskins story that you'd like to share?"

Ellenberger: "Well I...I've got quite a few. Is this an X-rated show?" (laughing)

Ellenberger: "That is good then. You can block them out if you need to. Oh, my gosh! There are just so many of them."

They then discussed those stories for the last few minutes of the show. Like the time that Haskins had painstakingly created a 'Squash Blossom' necklace out of beer can tabs and had presented it to Ellenberger before their game. To his credit, Norm wore it all evening long. Those were surely different times.

"I tell you what, I’ll never forget that," Haskins said. "I remember when that bear was rolling down towards me and I thought, “Damn, I wish I was playing golf!”

Somehow, they always kept coming back to the story about Don falling into the river. Apparently, he really did fall into the river and even broke a rib while doing so. While the actual depth and speed of the water were always in question, Coach Haskins was adamant that he was in real danger.

Ellenberger continued to deny this (of course), even after their mutual taunts and laughter faded into a final commercial break.

"Well, you probably don't know this about it," he says to me as if he were James Bond or that wily double-naught spy, Jethro Bodine.

"During the high school championship game that was the basis for that movie, Norman Ellenberger played a key role."

"No, I am not," he replies with a twinkle in his eye. "Norm told me this himself, while he was an assistant coach in El Paso."

Laughing at the impatience of this fan, Dave recites, "Norm was a college student in Butler at the time. As he told me, he would often take care of the court in order to pay for his tuition.

During that particular game -which became the basis of the movie Hoosiers, he had swept the court at half-time."

"Well how about this. Norm's full name was Norman Dale Ellenberger. The winning coach that season and in the movie, was named Norman Dale. How crazy is that?

Pretty crazy I am thinking right about now. But what I am really thinking about is how those two old friends both came together to rescue Norm Ellenberger from coaching purgatory. Don Haskins first, and then Bob Knight later on. It is called friendship. In this business however, it is usually called respect.

If you ever had any doubt about Norm's place in Lobo history, I hope that this helps bring the picture into better focus. There has never been anybody else like him before or since at the University of New Mexico and the Pit would never be the same again.

I am impressed. The first person in line?

"I owe everything for that to the people at UTEP for allowing me and my son to see him alone one last time," Dave Binder says. "When it finally came down to it, my son left me down there alone for a few minutes. I didn't stay a long time or do anything really remarkable, it was just a chance for me to say good-bye to him."

"This is really hard for me to express," Coach Binder adds emotionally. I didn't ask for any special treatment down there, but still to this day, they treat me well. That is just the way that people in El Paso are. I loved that guy. Coach Haskins was as good to me as any person that I have ever known. He was truly down to earth.

I think that the players who played for him and the people who all worked for him felt the same way. He was a special man and cared more for other people than he ever did himself. He was such an unselfish individual.

I can honestly say, he was far and away the most popular rival coach that the Lobos ever had. Nobody else was even close.

"Well, I tell you Jimmy," Coach Binder says, "he felt the same way about those fans down in New Mexico. When coach Haskins lost his son, there were more people in New Mexico – Albuquerque specifically, who sent him letters of condolences for the loss of his son than pretty much anywhere else. That shows you everything that you need to know about how the fans of New Mexico felt about Don Haskins.

I believe that Coach Haskins thought that if you could win at the Pit, then that was the biggest win in the world. I think that we won only one game here while I was a student trainer. As big as the game was though, the rivalry between Haskins and Ellenberger was an even bigger deal. Each one wanted to beat the other one so badly!

They were both great friends who loved to fish and hunt together, but there couldn't have been two more opposite guys. Ellenberger had this flamboyant -almost Playboy lifestyle. He was the kind of guy that would always hang around with the big-shot guys. Coach Haskins on the other hand, he would rather just hang around with the common folk.

They were truly opposites, but such great friends. They knew more about each other than maybe their own parents knew about them. They knew what offense the other one was going to run and so on."

That stuff is priceless.

"He was such a good man Jimmy," Dave reiterates, "and he truly loved New Mexico -no doubt about it. In fact, I think that had the opportunity ever availed itself to him, I believe that it was the only job that he might have ever left UTEP for. I am certain that he would have given very serious consideration to it at the very least. I really believe that he felt a national championship could be won down here because of the fans."

"I really think so."

On a Saturday night, at his beloved cabin in Watersmeet, Michigan, his good friend and former New Mexico coach Norman Ellenberger, died peacefully in his sleep on November 15th, 2015. He had been away from the cabin for the better part of a year due to illness, but cryptically, had decided to come back and check on it that particular weekend.

As had been the coaching profession for him all of those years, I think that

some instinct must have guided him there.

And like the coach he always was, he had spent the day diagramming plays and determining lineups for the upcoming high-school season, which was set to start on Monday. When his longtime companion turned over to embrace him at some point during the night, she realized that the old coach was gone.

Perhaps, he had merely been seeking advice on the upcoming season from an old friend and they had lost track of the time.

Ned's.

The live wolf.

22,000 in the Pit for Tarkanian and the legend of it all, will still live on forever for those who refuse to forget about such things. Talk about the end of an era.

Passionate and at our most ferocious.

Dave Binder had gotten to know Ellenberger pretty well down in El Paso, and recalls the following about their time together.

"Back in 1986," he says, "Haskins had hired his old friend Norman Ellenberger as an assistant coach, even though Norm was still essentially being blacklisted by the NCAA. Coach Haskins told me that he had been informed by then Athletic Director Bill Cords that if Ellenberger ever screwed up or got them into trouble, it was going to mean his (Haskins') job.

Can you believe that? Don Haskins? I mean, who in the hell is Bill Cords? Well, that was the kind of a friend that Coach Haskins was. He knew that Norm would never, ever, let him down.

And along those same lines, I will never forget this. You know, Norm was a pretty confident individual, but that first year when he was a UTEP assistant and it came time to play New Mexico down at the Pit, he was just so terrified! He was scared to death that the crowd was going to boo him, I swear to God. Now, he was really scared, but he couldn't have been more wrong.

The roar that came out of that arena when he was first introduced, (shaking his head) I have never heard anything else like it! And the smile that it put on his face and the load that it lifted from his back...well, it was just one of those moments that you will always remember for the rest of your life."

I was at that game and remember it well. Up in the stands, everyone seemed to be on pins and needles -undecided what to do. But when he emerged out of that tunnel, it was almost like the second coming. I even get goosebumps now, just thinking about it.

Enough time has passed since then however, that I am no longer sure if it was like the cheer for a conquering hero, or simply just the last hurrah for what might have been. Still, I would be remiss if I failed to ask Dave Binder if he ever had any insight as to what actually happened during that whole Lobogate fiasco.

"All I know is," Binder says, "Coach Haskins did not want him hiring (assistant coach) Manny Goldstein. He had even told him so in person.

Now, make of that what you will, but the crap soon hit the fan thereafter. I really think that it was some advice that Norm should have taken to heart. I also think that at this level, coaches sometimes get caught up in things that we will never know about.

Nevertheless, he was the head coach and the buck stops there, so it was ultimately his responsibility, either way."

Fair enough.

"I will really miss him though," Coach Binder says. "Outgoing and funny. Dang, he was funny! He would come up with this wild stuff -and man, he was a character! He really appreciated the opportunity that Coach Haskins gave him though, to have a another chance at doing what he loved.

And what a coach! The year that Coach Haskins completely lost his voice for the entire season, Norm Ellenberger stepped in as the head coach and took us all of the way to the NCAA Tournament. Now, Don was still at every practice, but Norm ran those practices by himself. Norm did a fabulous job the whole time and the players truly loved him.

He just seemed like such a players’ coach. I would assume that this had been the case down at New Mexico also. Still, he could be really demanding of them as well. Of course, he had been with the team for quite some time now, so they all knew what to expect from him.

I’ll tell you something else that was different about the two of them. Coach Haskins would just kind of stroll onto the basketball floor after everyone else was there and get things started. Coach Ellenberger would get there much earlier and really work with those kids. I always thought that was pretty cool."

(Speaking to the readers out there) I know this has been a long read, but having had the privilege to interview Dave Binder and write these stories has been a lot like trying to paint the side of a fast moving train. Life just seems to go by so quickly these days...

STOP.

If only it could be so simple.

Here in the rearviewmirror, it actually looks a lot like some old love letter to your high school sweetheart.

All X's and O's.

When The Bear went into one last hibernation during the offseason of 2008, the legendary Hall of Fame Coach was just 78 years of age. And although he may have hated the nickname, Don Haskins wore it well and left behind his huge tracks from here to yonder and beyond...and then some.

Stormin’ Norman, the coach who had once turned on those mythical lights of Albuquerque, died planning his next game in 2015 at the age of 83. He was like a shooting star on the NCAA skyline who truly loved to coach, perhaps like no other person that I have ever seen in my life.

The General of course, is thankfully still very much alive and now in retirement - although probably still kicking ass and taking names. I would bet real money though, that Robert Montgomery Knight dearly misses his old friends and their trips away from it all.

1,785 collegiate coaching victories among them with countless quail, trout, and bullshitting adventures in-between.

And as hard as it is to believe, their stories are probably all true (despite there being three different versions).

And a river runs through it.

Chapter Three: It's a Small World