Teams from UCLA, UTEP and Indiana are college hoop hall’s Class of 2020
Basketball as a team sport is clearly defined with the National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2020.
Three historic teams will be inducted into the Kansas City-based hall to form the entire class for this year:
- The 1963-64 UCLA Bruins, the first of coach John Wooden’s 10 NCAA title teams.
- The 1965-66 Texas Western (UTEP) Miners, the first team to win the NCAA cham.pionship with an all-Black starting five.
- The 1975-75 Indiana Hoosiers, the last undefeated NCAA championship team.
The teams will be inducted in a virtual ceremony in early 2021.
UCLA’s first NCAA title team was led by Walt Hazzard and Gail Goodrich. They completed a 30-0 season by defeating Kansas State and Duke at the Final Four in Municipal Auditorium. The Wooden dynasty — 10 championships in 12 years — ran through 1975.
Texas Western, now known as the University of Texas-El Paso, finished the 1966 season 28-1 and beat Kentucky in the final to capture the program’s only NCAA title. Coach Don Haskins’ team helped promote desegregation of basketball programs in the South and inspired the movie Glory Road.
Coach Bob Knight won the first of his three NCAA titles in 1976, when the Hoosiers completed a 32-0 season with a victory over Michigan in the title game. Indiana defeated their five NCAA Tournaments by an average of 15.1 points.
The teams will join the 1962-63 Loyola Ramblers in the hall of fame. Loyola, which also broke racial barrier by starting a majority of Black players, was indicted in 2013 on the 50th anniversary of its NCAA championship.
The Class of 2021 is expected to be announced Sunday.
This story was originally published November 28, 2020 at 3:32 PM.