The Coach's Playbook

In the 1966 NCAA basketball championship, Texas Western's head coach Don Haskins made a decision that demanded extraordinary obedience from his players. Haskins started five Black players against an all-white Kentucky team coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp — a first in championship history. His players had endured death threats, racist taunts, and finding their hotel rooms vandalized throughout the tournament. Every instinct screamed at them to fight back, to prove something with flash and fury.

But Haskins gave them a different play. He told them to win with fundamentals — disciplined defense, crisp passes, patient offense. No showboating. No retaliation. Just trust the coach's system. Bobby Joe Hill, David Lattin, Orsten Artis, and the rest of that starting five obeyed a game plan that must have felt painfully restrained given everything they had suffered. They won 72-65, and that single act of disciplined obedience changed college basketball forever.

Obedience to God often feels like that. The Almighty calls us to respond to hatred with grace, to answer provocation with steadiness, to trust His game plan when our emotions are screaming for a different play. Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our own understanding.

Those Texas Western players didn't just win a game. They won it God's way — with dignity, discipline, and obedience to a plan bigger than themselves. The Father's playbook always leads somewhere greater than our impulses ever could.