NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : EIGHT IS ENOUGH? : UTEP Coach Haskins Almost Runs Out of Players in 27th Season : WEST REGIONAL AT PAULEY PAVILION

Before the question could be asked, Don Haskins had his answer:

“I’ve never.”

Not in 27 seasons of coaching basketball, all of them at Texas El Paso, has he ever had a team so depleted as this one. It’s down to eight players now.

Haskins began the season with 14, but one thing or another--one player’s marriage and subsequent move, others’ injuries, another’s disciplinary dismissal, starter Chris Blocker’s academic ineligibility this month and starter Antonio Davis’ broken ankle last week--have brought the Miners to this.

Practice now is nothing but four-on-four. And rest assured that Seton Hall will try to get the Miners into foul trouble today when the teams meet in the first round of the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s West Regional at Pauley Pavilion.

It has been a difficult year or so for Haskins, beginning with the sudden and tragic death last year of Jeep Jackson, a Texas El Paso player from Gardena High School.

Haskins presses on with his customary folksiness, the mix of gruffness and countrified charm.

If Haskins seems something of a grandfatherly throwback, it is only because his great success came so early.

Many players in this NCAA tournament were not yet born when Haskins, then 36, guided Texas El Paso--then Texas Western--to the NCAA title in 1966. The Miners were one of only two teams to interrupt UCLA’s run of 10 NCAA titles in 12 years. The other was North Carolina State in 1974.

Texas Western won the national championship by beating Adolph Rupp’s Kentucky team, 72-65, in a game in which it was widely noted that the Miners started five black players. After Texas Western won, beating an all-white Kentucky team, Haskins got hate mail by the bucketful.

“I wasn’t out to be a pioneer when we played Kentucky,” Haskins said. “I was simply playing the best players on the team, and they happened to be black. And I would do it again.

“I got at least 40,000 hate letters, or at least that’s when we quit counting. We had to get the mail with trash cans.”

It took a year or so, but the mail finally subsided, Haskins said.

“Really and truly, it was a great thing that happened--we won the national championship--and I caught hell for it.”

Texas El Paso has been to the NCAA tournament 11 times now, but the Miners have never been close to winning again. In fact, they haven’t made it past the second round since 1970.

Haskins is often called “Bear” and he has a belly to go with the name. He calls the Big East Conference “a rasslin’ match every night,” and before postgame interviews, he often changes from a dress shirt to a more casual work shirt. His supporters, on the occasion of his 500th victory Dec. 17, gave him a 22-foot bass boat.

And is he tough!

Nevil Shed, a player on that 1966 team, when asked then whether Haskins treated his players equally, is supposed to have said: “Coach doesn’t have any favorites. He treats us all the same--bad.”

Apparently, not much has changed.

When someone asked current Miner guard Tim Hardaway if Haskins is tough, Hardaway looked to Haskins.

“Tell them the truth: Yes, I’m hard on you,” Haskins said.

“Yes, he’s hard on us. It’s good for us,” Hardaway said and laughed. “He’ll holler at you, but he means well.”

It may come as no great surprise that Bob Knight is one of Haskins’ closest friends in coaching.

“I don’t think a lot of people understand him, that he’ll do anything for anyone, and that when someone’s in trouble, they’ll hear from him,” Haskins said.

Just as Knight has taken in Tates Locke, the former Clemson coach disgraced by scandal, Haskins last year took in Norm Ellenberger, the coach who left New Mexico after a scandal, making him a volunteer assistant.

It is a sort of mutually deprecating relationship Knight and Haskins seem to enjoy.

“I only wish Haskins could handle a shotgun and fishing rod as well as he handles a basketball,” Knight has said of his friend.

Like Knight, Haskins likes to be thought of as tough.

“He likes people to think he’s rough, a tough guy,” said P.J. Carlesimo, Seton Hall coach. “That’s the way he looks to people, but he’s a nice guy.”

Carlesimo said he knows Haskins from playing golf with him, and calls him “a bit of a sandbagger.”

Haskins deadpanned his response: “I don’t remember ever playing with P.J. I think he’s lying.”

Although he’s just 58, people ask Haskins frequently now what is next for him.

“Ought to tell me something,” he said.

Only once, really, in all his years in El Paso, has Haskins thought of leaving.

A number of years ago, lured by a big salary, Haskins accepted the coaching job at the University of Detroit.

It lasted one day.

“I took it for the money,” he said. “They offered me triple what I was making. I let money do me in, and I knew it was a mistake before the day was out.

By now, you can probably figure he’s at UTEP to stay.

“I enjoy our school,” he said. “I enjoy our town. I think you enjoy the players wherever you are. I never have gone around wishing I’d done this or done that. I’ve enjoyed my 27 years here.

“I like the Southwest. If I were to leave--it probably isn’t too likely now--it would have to be in the West somewhere.”

So what is next?

“I don’t know. I never have thought of that. I have no idea.”