moved to Division I college basketball as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator at Baylor University under head coach Harry Miller. Miller and Gillispie had coached against each other in the same high school district as late as two years earlier, with Miller at Temple High School. The Baylor Bears' 1996 recruiting class was ranked as high as number six in the nation. After three years at Baylor, Gillispie moved to the University of Tulsa to be an assistant coach under Bill Self. Tulsa reached the elite 8 in the 2000 season. When Self moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Gillispie followed, working as an assistant there for the next two years. During those two seasons, Fighting Illini won back-to-back Big Ten Conference titles for the first time in 50 years, advancing to the Elite Eight in the 2001 NCAA Tournament and to the Sweet 16 in the 2002 NCAA Tournament. With Gillispie's assistance, Illinois landed a top 10 recruiting class in 2002. Through Gillispie's eight years as an assistant, he was a member of coaching staffs that won five conference championships in six years. As part of Bill Self's staff, he was a member of the only coaching staff in NCAA history to lead two different schools to the Elite Eight in successive seasons. UTEP Gillispie was hired as the head coach of the men's basketball team at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2002. 2002–2003 In his first season as a head coach, the UTEP Miners finished a dismal 6–24. Despite the poor showing, Gillispie put his recruiting expertise to work so that his first recruiting class ranked in the top 25 in the country and included Filiberto Rivera, the 2003 National Junior College Player of the Year, and Omar Thomas, the all-time leading scorer in junior college basketball. 2003–2004 In the exhibition games preceding the 2003–04 season, Gillispie's UTEP Miners defeated the Harlem Globetrotters 89–88, after the Globetrotters had already defeated many college teams including the then-defending national champion, Syracuse Orange. It was the first defeat the Harlem Globetrotters had suffered in 289 games. Although the Miners were predicted to finish ninth in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) for the 2003–04 season, UTEP instead captured their first conference title in 12 years. The team finished 24–8 and received a bid to the 2004 NCAA tournament. The 18-win improvement was the best in