David Lattin
David Lattin
David "Big Daddy D" Lattinwas the starting center for the Texas Western Miners in their NCAA championship year in 1966. During his playing career, he was listed at 6 feet 6 inches tall, and 225 pounds...
allowed bad came compete explain game reach reasons win
One of the reasons it's so important to me is it has allowed me to reach out to youngsters, explain to them where we came from, what we did, why the game was so important. We could compete with anybody. They can win as well and do anything they want to do if they want to do it bad enough.
gentleman hard played type
It was a gentleman type of game. They played hard to win, and we played hard to win.
Some of the things really happened. Some of them are just a movie.
anybody bad bald bathroom beaten came couple gets good guy guys happened head heads lived nice nobody players pounds racial restaurant scene stop stuffed threw toilet
I was 6-6, 240 pounds and didn't look like a very nice guy out there so nobody ever threw a racial slur at me. There were some things that happened a couple of times to my teammates, and I came to their rescue, but nobody ever said anything to me. I had a bald head, never smiled?they wanted no part of me. There was one scene in the movie where one of our players is beaten up in a restaurant bathroom and his head gets shoved in the toilet, but that never happened. If anybody would've stuffed one of my guys heads in the toilet like that, they wouldn't have lived to tell about it. There's nothing Haskins or anybody else could've said to stop me from doing something really bad to those guys. Again, that's the movie stuff. Good for dramatics, but I'd never let that happen.
happen houston players quickly saw south sudden teams
All of the sudden you saw teams in the South like Houston go get players like Don Chaney and Elvin Hayes -- that probably doesn't happen so quickly if we don't win.