Donald Lee Haskins (March 14, 1930 – September 7, 2008), nicknamed "The Bear", was an American basketball player and coach.

In 1966 his team won the NCAA tournament over the Wildcats of the University of Kentucky, coached by Adolph Rupp.

After college and a stint with the Amateur Athletic Union's Artesia Travelers, Haskins began coaching small-town Texas high schools (Benjamin, Hedley and Dumas) from 1955 to 1961.

[2] In the 1950s, prior to Haskins' arrival, Texas Western recruited and played African American players in a time when it was still common to find all-white college sports teams, particularly in the South.

One of those players, El Paso native Nolan Richardson, later won the 1994 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament national championship as the head coach at Arkansas.

"[7] Though credited with advancing the desegregation of college basketball teams in the South, he wrote in his book, Glory Road, "I certainly did not expect to be some racial pioneer or to change the world."

Among the players he coached at UTEP over the years were future NBA all-stars Nate Archibald, Tim Hardaway, and Antonio Davis.

In 1977, UTEP moved from Memorial Gym, home of the 1966 champions, to the larger Special Events Center.

Glory Road, a Walt Disney Pictures film about the then-Texas Western 1966 championship season, was released on January 13, 2006.

On November 29, 2005, the City of El Paso renamed the street between its two basketball arenas "Glory Road."

[8] Haskins stated his disappointment[9] at the cutting of the movie scenes of his one-on-one games with his boyhood friend Herman Carr, who is African-American.

Glory Road was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, and was based upon Haskins' official same-titled autobiography, written with Dan Wetzel and released by Hyperion Books in 2005.

He was survived by his wife Mary, sons Brent, Steve, and David, and grandsons John Paul, Cameron, and Dominick.