Texas El Paso Miners NCAA Basketball News

UTEP will step under the bright lights of center court in the Don Haskins Center on Tuesday night, ready for the second test in a long basketball season.

A Hurricane Ike-damaged library wants to share stories of Galveston residents who rode out the storm on the island and those who fled.

Julyan Stone scored 19 points and grabbed eight rebounds for Texas El-Paso, which beat Texas Southern 69-63 on Friday night in a season opener.

For players, it never gets here quite soon enough. For coaches, it always arrives much, much too quickly.

UTEP will have that most unique of basketball creatures this season -- a young team that is an experienced team.

It only took eleven seconds for the Miners to test their new post player out. Kareem Cooper caught a pass from Julyan Stone and banked it off the glass for the first two points, en route to a 111-76 victory ...

Welcome to a sampling of the Web log entries you can enjoy every day on the El Paso Times Web site.

Look for that extra line on the court this year, a line that might cause a wee bit of confusion and a line that might possibly make a big difference.

UTEP went through an intense, three- hour practice Friday afternoon and came right back with another tough two- hour session Saturday morning.

Friday was a beginning, a hard-work, intense, sweat filled beginning ... a beginning with so many high hopes and hoop dreams floating through the Don Haskins Center.

He hasn't reached the heights of the late Don Haskins, but current UTEP head man Tony Barbee certainly has the Miners going in the right direction in just his third year on the job.

The UTEP men's basketball team is picked to finish fourth in Conference USA this season by league coaches.

UTEP fans can get their first look at the 2008-09 Miner men's and women's basketball teams at "Miner Madness" on Saturday at the Don Haskins Center.

SCOUTING THE NEWCOMERS: The Miners will get a major boost from this year's group of newcomers, particularly two Division I transfers who become eligible.

"Miner Madness," an event where UTEP fans can get their first look at this season's men's and women's basketball teams, is planned for Oct.

The UTEP men's basketball team will play 16 home games during the 2008-09 season, including hosting Memphis, UNLV, Texas Tech and New Mexico State.

In initial versions of a Sept. 7 obituary for Hall of Fame college basketball coach Don Haskins, The Associated Press erroneously reported the surname of a member of Haskins' 1966 national championship team.

Thousands of people filled the Don Haskins Center on Thursday night to remember the basketball coach in a memorial service that took on the atmosphere of a college game.

Don Haskins, credited with helping break color barriers in college sports in 1966 when he used five black starters to win a national basketball title for Texas Western, died Sunday.

The Miners return three starters and nearly 70 percent of their scoring output from last year's 19-14 club.