high school basketball

“They made a Civil Rights statement by excelling at something that all Hoosiers valued, which is excellence in basketball.”

Also, what was the biggest year for high school basketball in Indiana?

To the extent that Milan’s victory inspired ‘Hoosiers,’ one could argue that ‘Hoosiers’ returned the favor, enshrining the game in the country’s collective sports-history consciousness. And here, to mark the 50th anniversary of the game that ‘Hoosiers’ celebrates, former Milan players and the film’s cast and crew hold court on making a sports movie for the ages.

Forty years ago, Larry Bird passed on a chance at big-time basketball. The small-town star left Bob Knight’s IU team before a single game and returned home.

There’s a lot of hot air left in DeflateGate, plus an Indy 500 champ strips down for Pattern magazine.

The players of Crispus Attucks High School wrote a new chapter in the book of Hoosier basketball lore—one in which underdogs could be kids from urban ghettos, could grow up shooting in alleys and parks, could be black and be a vital part of the glory of the game.

The Hoosiers film crew couldn’t get quite enough warm bodies to fill the stands at Hinkle Fieldhouse for the championship game scenes, so they fudged with creative camera angles.

Granted permission to begin making their movie just two weeks before the season started, Cohn and Rothbart picked up and moved from where they lived in Ann Arbor to spend a year in Medora. Six hundred hours of footage later, the duo has an 82-minute film that Cohn says is all about identity.

UPDATE, Dec. 14, 2012: Superstar actress/producer Vivica A. Fox has words for the girls basketball team members at her alma mater, Arlington High School, and shared them via Twitter last night: “Wow! My assnt told me about this yesterday! Come Golden Knights gurls! Time 4 more practice!! U can do it ;-)”

Editor’s Note, Nov. 12, 2012: At tonight’s game, Indiana University and its men’s basketball team honor Bill Garrett, the first African-American man to play Big Ten basketball, marking the 65th anniversary of the first game in the conference in which he played. “Well, what happens now to Bill Garrett, Emerson Johnson and Marshall Murray? After […]

The basketball team wasn’t the only thing best described as scrappy.

What makes this Columbus institution really sweet is the counter-side charm of Wilma Hare and her fellow soda jerks, who will pull you an ice cream soda the way it was in 1900 and serve it with a side of sass: “When that ice cream hits the carbonation, it will explode like a volcano. And I will laugh at the look of panic on your face.”