The Colony Courier-Leader (The Colony, Tex.), Vol. 24, No. 50, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 Page: 3 of 16
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www.colonyleader.com — Wednesday, January 18, 2006 — The Colony Courier-Leader — Page 3A
‘Glory Road’ scores with shot off the glass
BY KEVIN BOWEN
FILM CRITIC
You know, I grew up in El
Paso.
From the 28th row, I’ve
watched UTEP’s Hall of Fame
basketball coach Don Haskins
since I was young - slamming
chairs, yelling at refs and preach-
ing defense like a Baptist minis-
ter on the eve of the Apocalypse.
So I grew up nursed on the
story of how the school, when it
was still known as Texas
Western in 1966, stunned the bas-
ketball world by winning the
NCAA championship. The team
started five black players, a then-
unheard-of idea, against an all-
white University of Kentucky
squad led by Adolph Rupp, leg
endary coach and bigot.
’ To call it local legend is to
belittle its importance to the city.
So I come to “Glory Road,” the
very Disney account of that team
and its accomplishment, with
some baggage that can't be left at
the door.
In other words, I’m saddled
with the facts, and a decent slice
of ‘Glory Road” comes out of
Film Fantasia. If the film had
Dumbo in the starting five (What
hang time!), it wouldn’t have
been a complete surprise.
So what do you say about a
fairly entertaining sports movie,
with a worthwhile message
about racial tolerance, when so
much is inaccurate, overblown
or milking every pushed button
for all the melodrama it’s worth?
“Glory Road”
[PG]
***‘
In the movie version, it’s 1965,
and Texas Western has hired
Haskins (Josh Lucas), a high
school girls’ coach, to run its
nickel-and-dime basketball pro-
gram. Without much of a recruit-
ing budget, Haskins and his
assistants scrape together
enough cash to visit northern
cities and recruit black players
neglected by white-heavy college
programs.
The team becomes an on-
court juggernaut, cruising to a
27-1 record. Led by point guard
Bobby Joe Hill (Derek Luke,
“Finding Forrester"). The team
makes it to the finals, where they
defeat “Rupp’s Runts” in what
has been described as the
“Brown v. Board of Education of
college basketball.”
The road there is fraught with
racial tension, both inside the
team and out. White teammates
resent the newcomers. Southern
fans taunt the players. The ten-
sion rises, at least in the movie,
through a racist assault in a
restaurant bathroom and the
trashing of the team’s hotel
room. By the end, they are play-
ing for the win and human digni-
ty.
A general rule for this “Road”
is that if the scene looks suspi-
cious, there’s likely a reason, heart. The players’ trip to a
“Glory Road” never lets reality Juarez bar rings true to local
stand in the way of good sports lore. Lucas captures Haskins’
movie formula. caring belligerence, even if
Start with the basics, forced to mouth lines like,
Haskins was actually in his “They have the talent, but we
sixth year, his third tournament have the heart.”
and had already coached an So what should you think
Olympian and top NBA draft when Hollywood makes a
pick. About the final, Haskins movie close to your heart but
has said he was simply playing you aren’t quite comfortable
his best players; race didn’t with the story it tells?
enter his thinking, as it does
here.
If the facts aren’t quite right,
they aren’t that far off, either. If
some incidents are overdone or
fictional, that doesn’t mean the
team didn’t endure much racial
abuse. The South’s major con-
ferences were still white-only,
matched by a racist social struc-
ture that was in upheaval in
1966. While bathed in cliche, it’s
hard to discount either the
power of the story or the value
of its message.
While the movie has big
themes, its smaller details have
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Last Holiday —Queen
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Crimmins, Blaine. The Colony Courier-Leader (The Colony, Tex.), Vol. 24, No. 50, Ed. 1 Wednesday, January 18, 2006, newspaper, January 18, 2006; The Colony, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1621903/m1/3/: accessed June 21, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting The Colony Public Library.