Miners Set To Begin New Era With Tim Floyd At The Helm
UTEP Athletic Director Bob Stull and University President Diana Natalicio announced the hiring of former assistant Tim Floyd as the new head coach of the UTEP Miners Men’s Basketball team.
The announcement was made at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.
“Our history is very deep,” said Floyd at the conference which included former Miners and the Haskins family. “It’s been very emotional for me. I look around and I see former players. I see friends and I see my second mother, Mary Haskins.”
Floyd grew up in El Paso and recalled looking up in the sky to see the fireworks used to celebrate a UTEP touchdown at the Sun Bowl.
“We are welcoming home one of our own,” said Natalicio. “Our proud basketball tradition will now be in the hands of Tim Floyd. He has always remained loyal and committed to UTEP.”
Stull said he visited with Floyd over the weekend and the memory of Don Haskins immediately took center stage. “We instantly got into sharing stories we had about Don,” said Stull. “At one point, we realized we needed to start talking about the job.”
According to Stull, there was a lot of anxiety amongst the players following the departure of Tony Barbee, who left the Conference USA champs to take over the head coaching job at Auburn. “I told them we would find somebody that would continue the success that we had in the last year.
Stull said he strongly believes Floyd is going to develop the current roster of players, which he considers the strongest group the university has had in a long time.
From 1977 to 1986, Floyd served as an assistant basketball coach under the legendary Don Haskins. “Coach Haskins took me in at a time when I didn’t have the experience or the knowledge to be a part of the game. He gave me the opportunity.”
Floyd left UTEP after getting the head coaching job at the University of Idaho, where he coached from 1986 to 1988. He was later named the head coach at the University of New Orleans from 1988 to 1984.
Success as the head coach at Iowa State University from 1994 to 1998 propelled him to the National Basketball League. He was the head coach of the Chicago Bulls from 1998 to 2002. Floyd even hired Don Haskins as a basketball consultant during his stint with the Bulls.
“[Don] meant everything to me in terms of my professional career. I never took a job without talking to coach,” Floyd said.
After leaving the Bulls, Floyd coached the New Orleans Hornets during the 2003-04 season.
He then returned to college basketball to be the head coach of the University of Southern California, where he coached from 2005 to 2009. He resigned over a recruiting scandal that is still being investigated by the NCAA.
His career coaching record at the collegiate level stands at 327 wins and 181 losses.
Coach Floyd will be the guest of a special edition of ABC-7 X-tra following ABC-7 at 10 Tuesday night.
