Outstanding!! Who Ever Heard Of Texas Western

Rating: 9/10 (28 January 2006)

After reading several reviews on this site, people need to realize that this movie is "BASED" on a true story. Which basically means, not everything is going to be completely ACCURATE. People need to stop reviewing the movie on accuracy and everything being a FACT. There has never been a movie made that was truly and complete accurate. NEVER!! So stop trying to review this movie on facts. No one cares if Kentucky was trailer by 11 points in the championship.
Glory Road is an excellent telling of the 1966 Texas Western NCAA Championship win against Kentucky. It's true that Don Haskins didn't win the championship his first year. Because of the recruiting budget he decided to venture northeast to the playgrounds of New York & Philadephia and recruit prominent black players to play for Texas Western. These players had to struggle with not only a tough coach, but also racism, other players and a new surrounding. For people to say that these players didn't face what was shown in the film, are either idiots or were born in the 80's and don't have a clue. There is still racism TODAY in Texas and other southern states.
The movie does an excellent job of showing what the coach and players had to go through to reach the final championship game. Whether each game was accurate point for point is irrelevant, as the story is more about the team and the coach, and not really each game that was played. Even though some of the players weren't professional actors, I thought this did an admirable job portraying there counterparts. Josh Lucas was excellent as the hard nosed Don Haskins who gave strong leadership to the boys. I thought they could have done more with Emily Deschanel role as Don Haskin's wife. They also should have showed Don Haskin's first 4 yrs and what the team was like prior to all the recruiting.
There is no doubt that this Texas Western team paved the road for the black players of today. True, other college teams had 1-2 black players on their team back in 1966, but most of them were just tokens at the time, and saw very little playing time, if any at all. There had never been 5 black starters. Yes, teams had won championships with black players on the team, but never with 5 starting and playing the whole game. That was the point. Back in 1966, most southern state coaches didn't believe black players were athletic or intelligent enough to play at the college basketball level. Texas Western proved these coaches wrong. Now more then 75% of the NBA are minority (black, Asian, hispanic, etc.) players.
Who Ever Heard Of Texas Western? I hadn't until now. Now everyone knows.