Trailblazer Fred Snowden
Photo by The Tucson Citizen
By Troy Hutchison
Before 1970, there were zero black head coaches in D1 college basketball, The first coach to break through was Illinois State's William J. Robinson. In 1972, a man named Fred Snowden took the head coaching job at the University of Arizona, becoming the school's first black coach and the first black coach at a major institution.
Back in the 70's, Arizona wasn't a part of the Pac-12; in fact, the conference was known as the Pac-8, and the Wildcats were in a different conference called the Western Athletic Conference, also known as the WAC.
Before Snowden's arrival to the desert, Arizona had been in a drought when it came to college basketball. The program had suffered three straight losing seasons and hadn't made the NCAA tournament since 1951....