Every life is an endless series of snapshots. Here are some from the scrapbook of Minnesota basketball coach Clem Haskins, whose 22nd-ranked Gophers play host to Northwestern Thursday night . . .
”Clem Haskins High. Go to hell.” The wall at Taylor County High School in Campbellsville, Ky., has been painted over many times, but, says Haskins, if you look closely, you still can see the words. ”Clem Haskins High. Go to hell.”
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They were scribbled there early in the tumultuous `60s, back when Haskins, a blossoming basketball talent at all-black Durham High, transferred and integrated all-white Taylor County. For three weeks in that fall of 1961, he traveled to that school, tried to enroll and was rebuffed at the front door. He was not admitted until U.S. marshalls came in from Frankfort and convinced officials to accept him by threatening to cut off their federal funds.
That got him inside and onto the court, yet it was hardly the end to his travails and traumas. There were turned-over buses, threatening phone calls and the racist`s traditional cry, the cry of, ”Hey, nigger. Go to hell, nigger.” Haskins would hear that often enough while playing for Taylor County, and that oral revilement only added to the more-concrete abuses he encountered while performing.
Security guards, he remembers, regularly attended his games, and in them he often was tripped and spat upon-always, always, without a foul being called. ”You have to understand,” he says, ”that when I was on the floor, it could have been a Mack truck out there against me, and I was going to get mine. It only hurt after the game, to think that people were treating me like a dog.”
After games, in the locker room, he would cry in the wake of it all, and some nights, after particularly vicious affairs, he would remain there for three, maybe four hours. ”There were people waiting outside who wanted to kill me,” he says of those nights, and here he must stop.
He is an emotional man, and even now, nearly three decades later, the memories are acute and the feelings are palpable. ”It hurt so bad. It hurt. Just hurt,” he finally continues. ”You`re 16, 17 years old, you can`t understand. Everything you read about Jackie Robinson going through, I went through at 16, 17.
”Why do it? I can`t answer that. I come from a very religious family, and I don`t want to get into religion because everyone doesn`t believe the way I do. But it was something God directed me to do, to be in a situation where I could make a difference. People ask, `Were you scared?` Yes and no. It was there. You were afraid. But nothing was going to keep me from going back the next night. I was going to go back and get my points and beat on your ass.
”The people who were cruel to me, I`m thankful for. I give those people credit. They helped me. They made me tougher, stronger. They made me work harder to be successful.”
– – –
It is the fall of 1986, and Haskins, Minnesota`s first-year coach, has just watched his dozen players go through their first conditioning drill, a mile run. One, whom he has projected as a starting guard, quits with cramps, and his probable running mate in the backcourt pulls up lame. Only three of the 12 manage to finish, in fact, and the winner is then-freshman center Jim Shikenjanski who, remembers Haskins, couldn`t ”chew gum and walk.”
”It was scary. We had no players. I walked out the first day (for practice), I`m sweating bullets. I could go on and on. We didn`t know north from south. At first (in April, when he took the job), I was working so hard, I didn`t think about losing. But when I walked on the court, it hit me. `We may not win a ballgame.` ”
He arrived in Minneapolis from Western Kentucky, where he starred as an All-America in 1967. That spring the Bulls made him their first-round pick
(and the third choice overall), and after performing in the NBA for three teams and nine seasons, he returned to his alma mater as an assistant to first Jim Richards, then Gene Keady. He was named its head coach when Keady left for Purdue in 1980, and by the end of the 1985-86 season, both he and his Hilltoppers were well established.
Minnesota, in contrast, has just been devastated by scandals that have left it bereft of both talent and public good will. Three of its players have been charged with rape, and though they eventually will be acquitted, they have been booted from school. And coach Jim Dutcher has quit in protest. The school`s administration has been split into camps for and against athletics, and the campus and community have been segmented similarly.
”The friction. Black against black. White against black. White against white. It was so bad, I can`t tell you,” says Haskins.
”I had to turn people around. I had to sell myself, sell the program. But being so competitive, the toughest thing I had to do was prepare myself for losses. We had to put winning aside. We didn`t want the players embarrassed, and we were that bad. We felt any conference game where we stayed within 15 points was a win. We convinced the players of that, and played like that.
”We never talked about winning. We wanted stability and credibility;
that`s all we talked about. How hard was it? If you measure 1 to 10 with 10 as the maximum, it was probably an 11.”
– – –
It is the fall of 1989, and here is what Haskins has his fourth Minnesota team talking about from the start of practice: He has them talking about a Big 10 title.
That chatter is not merely wishful thinking, for behind them now are moral victories and the 19-37 record of Haskins` first two years. Now, fresher in their memories, is the previous spring-the spring that saw them selected for the NCAA tourney with a 17-11 record, and then cop wins over Kansas State and Siena before losing to Duke in the round of 16.
Shikenjanski, once an awkward freshman, is now their starting center, and joining him on the front line are Willie Burton, a splendid scorer, and Richard Coffey, a fearsome rebounder Haskins recruited out of the airborne division of the U.S. Army. Kevin Lynch and Melvin Newbern are among the top backcourt pairs in their conference, and first off the bench is the ever-dangerous Walter Bond out of Collins High.
They ran off 10 straight victories between an opening-game loss to Cincinnati and road losses last week to surprising Purdue and powerful Michigan, yet despite those recent setbacks, Haskins still insists, ”We have a chance to be a Top 20 club.
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”But what people don`t realize as they`re climbing the ladder of success-it`s tough to get there, and once you get there, it`s a bitch to stay. Everyone is trying to knock you off, so I have to get the players to understand that, yes, it`s OK to read their press clippings, but also that their reputation precedes them.
”We`re no longer conference doormats. Before this, other people saw Minnesota on their schedule and put down a `W.` Now, they have to stay up nights worrying about us. We`re no longer a joke, but at the same time we have to fight fire with fire by working our butts off.”
He pauses here, and thinks back to a Western Kentucky professor named John Scarborough. ”There`s no free ice cream,” that professor often said, and it made such an impression, Haskins now has that aphorism on a sign that hangs in his office.
”This year,” he finally says, ”we want to taste ice cream. We deserve it. We worked hard for it. I can`t”-and now he could be talking of himself, as well as his team-”I can`t tell you how far we`ve come. Today, to have a chance to win, it`s unbelievable.”