We’re on our incredibly-long-for-no-good-reason-except-woooo-vacation honeymoon, and still have a week to go, but we break radio silence with sad news - Don Haskins, the legendary coach at UTEP née Texas Western, passed away earlier this morning.

Haskins is, of course, best known for coaching the 1966 national championship team from El Paso, the first such championship team to feature an all-black starting lineup. Fans less familiar with history of the game, and more familiar with sugar-laden Disney biopics, remember Haskins and the ‘66 Miners from the 2006 movie Glory Road.

(In a rare breach of anonymity, here’s a much longer review we wrote of that movie when it came out. We cringe re-reading it, in part because it’s too long, in part because we were probably too kind to the movie, but mostly because we commented favorably about something written by Scoop Jackson.)

In later years, Haskins hoped he would be remembered as a coach rather than any sort of social mover - in his mind, breaking racial barriers in West Texas made sense because it allowed him to put his best team on the court. Makes sense to us.

Rest in peace, Coach.

Terrible news coming out of Illinois this morning - Kevin Bryant, a recent graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University and a three-year letterman for the school’s Division III basketball team, died in Colorado on Sunday as the result of a whitewater rafting accident.

Bryant was not a standout on the court - his senior year, he only played in seven games - but those who knew Bryant said he wore his bench-warmer status with a smile, working tirelessly to make his team and teammates better.

Condolences go out to Bryant’s family and friends, and to the IWU athletic community.