Out in the Blessed Texas Town of El Paso

It’s a Miner miracle. Texas El Paso, under Coach Mike Price, is 6-2 this season, matching the Miners’ victory total of the last three seasons. The Miners are ranked 25th in the Associated Press poll and will have a winning season for only the fourth time since 1970.

“This is not the first time that UTEP has been ranked,” Price told reporters. “At the beginning of the season, we were ranked 116th, I think, out of 117.

“So we’ve been ranked before. Just not as high.”

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Add miracle: Price is working wonders at a school without a football tradition and without blue-chip recruits. It’s not easy getting top players to come to El Paso, as ESPN Radio’s Colin Cowherd noted.

“El Paso is Latin for keep on going,” Cowherd said.

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Trivia time: Who replaced Laker forward Elgin Baylor in 1971 after Baylor’s injured knee forced him to retire?

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Feminine view: Almost half, 46.7%, of the female respondents in a Newcastle Brown Ale basketball survey gave thumbs up to the “Kiss Me” promotion at NBA games. Some said that being shown on the scoreboard kissing their men was the best part of going to a game.

And 66.7% of female respondents said that, to enjoy watching games at home, they needed to explain to their men that no one can hear them shouting at the TV.

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L.A. supporter: In a Fox feature Sunday on Minnesota quarterback Daunte Culpepper, Viking Coach Mike Tice said that Culpepper was not treated fairly in Minnesota because of the color of his skin.

Said Fox’s Jimmy Johnson: “Maybe Mike Tice and Daunte Culpepper would be happier if Red McCombs would sell the team to Larry Ellison and Oracle. They don’t want an expansion team in Los Angeles and it would be a great situation for the Vikings.”

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Working a full shift: Former NBA coach George Karl is a minority owner of the Idaho Stampede, a Continental Basketball Assn. team in Boise.

“My active role is to go out to dinner, drink some beers, talk about the team, talk about the league and talk about the state of the game of basketball,” Karl told the Idaho Statesman. “Sometimes that can last six to eight hours for me.”

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Looking back: On this day in 1973, back when they played hockey, Stan Mikita of the Chicago Black Hawks scored his 1,000th NHL point with an assist in a 5-4 loss to Minnesota.

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Trivia answer: Jim McMillian. His first start for the Lakers was the first game of the record 33 consecutive victories and he finished the regular season with an 18.8-point scoring average.

In a list of the greatest athletes to come out of Columbia University, published in 2000, McMillian, class of 1970, ranked third behind two pretty good names -- Lou Gehrig, class of ‘25, and Sid Luckman, class of ’39.

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And finally: Joe Davidson of the Sacramento Bee, on the retirement of Rick Fox: “The roster of NBA antagonists for King fans to verbally brutalize is thinning.”

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Larry Stewart can be reached at larry.stewart@latimes.com.