Billy Clyde on Don Haskins
Today Billy Clyde had this to say on the passing of a college basketball legend:
Whether Billy Gillispie was head coach at Texas-El Paso, Texas A&M or now at Kentucky, every day after a game came a call from legendary coach Don Haskins.
"Those phone calls weren't about trying to tell me what to do. Coach Haskins was just there for you,” Gillispie said Sunday night. "Most of the time it would be me reaching out to him asking, ‘Hey, Coach, what do you see? What do you think?' There were so many things that could slip by me, and he could help us get it corrected just by watching the game. He had an amazing ability to do that, and he had an amazing willingness to help.
"I can't imagine how many people he helped throughout his life like that, and he never wanted any credit.”
Gillispie and Haskins met the day Gillispie was hired as UTEP's coach in 2002.
"This is no disrespect to anyone, but I can't imagine any coach or any person meaning more to a university than what Don Haskins meant to Texas-El Paso,” Gillispie said. "That was his university, that was his city and it probably always will be. Once you've lived there, you can really feel it. You know the intense passion people there had for coach Haskins. People loved him until the day he died.”
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