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The Don Haskins Center is home to dozens of championship banners. They represent some of the greatest team accomplishments that UTEP basketball has reached - including the pinnacle 1966 NCAA Championship banner.
There is a UTEP team that is striving to reach some of the heights reached by the Bobby Joe Hill-led title squad. Despite having never reached the postseason and always living in the shadow of their male counterparts, the UTEP women are the kings (or rather queens) of The Don this year.
Quick! When was the last time the UTEP men reached the top 20 in the country in any national poll? If you don't know, it is because most UTEP students were probably still toddlers when it happened.
It coincides with the last time the Miners actually won an NCAA tournament game - during the 1991-1992 season.
Sitting at 25-2 at the completion of the C-USA regular season, the women have already completed the first-ever unblemished mark (16-0) in Conference USA play. They were also the first in conference history to finish undefeated on the road.
To put that into perspective, the men, who have the historic 1966 National Championship under their belts, have never finished a conference season with less than two losses and that 8-2 record was almost 50 years ago. That was even before the Miners' decades-long tenure in the Western Athletic Conference. At that time, UTEP was still Texas Western College in the Border Conference.
It should be noted that when UTEP won the NCAA crown, they were an independent, but that still doesn't diminish what this women's team has been able to accomplish in conference play.
They also have the longest winning streak (21 games) since - you guessed it - the '66 team.
If they can find a way to get to 24 consecutive wins, they would surpass even the greatest team to ever grace the campus. Of course, that would mean winning the C-USA Tournament crown as well, but at this point, it is hard to bet against them.
With three more wins, UTEP can: 1) Reach 28 wins, which would tie the school record 2) Break the school consecutive wins mark, and maybe even 3) earn the highest seed UTEP has ever received in the NCAA Tournament.
We're talking about school (not program) records - the best by both the men and women.
The men have capped out at a four-seed back in 1984, when they were promptly upset by UNLV. Since then, they have only earned the top half of the brackets twice, both times being a seven-seed.
A 28-2 team with a regular season and tournament title under their belt and a good spot in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), could mean anywhere from a three-seed to six-seed, possibly being on the higher end of that spectrum.
The time to dream of even greater things could be at hand. While most of the first/second-round sites in the Women's NCAA Tournament are in far away sites in different time zones, one in particular sticks out. The Pit in Albuquerque, N.M. will host games in a week and a half. With the crowds that started to come around in the last month of the season, maybe Adams, Natasha Lacy, Jareica Hughes and the rest of the UTEP women can lead an orange-and-blue caravan up I-25.
UTEP fans came out en masse to see the men in Denver in 2004 and Tucson in 2005.
Don't these women deserve it too?
Quinton Martinez may be reached at qnmartinez@miners.utep.edu.
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