Superb anecdote, mate

30 for 30 documentary on Indiana HS basketball please.

That was ~15 years ago and I didn't have to look up the fact that he obv went to Bloomington North. And that's not really a nerdy thing... it was just accepted common knowledge. I bet more people in the state could have told you the state champion basketball school that year than the Secretary of ANYTHING in the US government.

Who wants to see a bunch of guys pass the ball 4 times every play?

What's wrong with that?

You're representing the Hoosier state well. I went to South Vermillion in the 1980's. Small school outside of Terre Haute that won Sectionals in 1986. We got smoked in the first game of Regionals, but that did nothing to diminish what winning Sectionals meant for our town. We had some great rivalries with the neighboring area schools, but when we went to class basketball we got stuck in 3A. We barely qualified due to our enrollment size, and since we're slightly larger than all of our old traditional rivals we'll never get to play them in the state tournament ever again. I'm not complaining because we don't get to throttle the smaller schools any more, because that's not the case. In fact, our school's success through the years was pretty paltry.

We also have to drive long distances in some cases to play Sectional games against schools we have no historical connection with. This year's Sectional contained only two other teams from our old conference. Some of the teams in that bracket were nearly two hours drive through the back roads from my old school. Indiana's love for basketball isn't completely gone, but the move to a class system was a crushing blow.

With regards to the documentary, I love it so far. I've only seen the first half of the program so far, but the memories of those Pacers teams brought back a ton of great memories. I barely remember seeing the Pacers on channel 4 in the dying days of the ABA. I remember their ad campaign in the early 80's being, "See Bird, Johnson and Erving as the come to town to play the Pacers." Smits hitting a buzzer beater in the playoffs against Orlando at MSA. Finally breaking through to the Finals in 2000, with what was probably the worst team of the run IMO. The '98 team that went nose-to-nose with Jordan's Bulls and nearly got me killed in a bar fight against what seemed like the entire Chicago Fire Department when Reggie pushed off and hit the three at the buzzer to win Game 4. God, I'd love to have the last five minutes of that game 7 over again.

I watched one of the Indiana-Orlando playoff games in a bar in Bloomington. I'm pretty sure it was Game 1 of the 1995 conference finals. Orlando had the game won, and was covering the point spread. The owner of the bar had booked a lot of bets on the Pacers, and was ready to make a nice payday. Byron Scott hit a half-court shot at the buzzer which made Indiana cover the game, although they still lost. The bar erupted, as everyone there had action on the Pacers, and the owner was instantly stricken with a look that read, "Oh ****. I don't have enough cash on me to cover all of these bets!"

Some of the posters have talked about Smits' apparent lack of love for the game. They're not kidding, but he did approach the game as a job to be performed well. The only center he really had tons of trouble with in that era was Olajuwon, which wouldn't have ended well had the Pacers won the East in '94 or '95. His great love is automobiles, and I remember that near the end of his career he was attending a technical college to learn to be a certified mechanic.

Sick brag: I live in Illinois now, just across the border from Indiana. When my wife and I had our son a couple of years ago, I convinced her to not have the baby in the local hospital but to instead drive the 50 miles to Terre Haute so my son could be born a Hoosier. And yes, his toy basketball is red, white and blue!

Mattsey, did you live in Clinton then?

Yes, you?

No, but I visited there for the Little Italy Festival a few times.

I grew up in Middletown, just east of Anderson.

Out of curiousity, why is HS basketball so big in Indiana? It seems like it's a religion there compared to other places.

It was a religion here, until the class system broke it down. It was the equivalent of HS football in Texas.

I think that part of the reason was that it is a year round, indoor/outdoor sport. A lot of farms had hoops hanging on their barns. We have also had some legendary players that came from Indiana that kept the magic alive.

The Indiana state basketball tournament was famous nationwide when it was one class. To my knowledge, only 3 states had single class tourneys but in no place was it as big as here.

Consider this--the first year that they moved the state finals to the (then) Hoosier Dome, they drew 40K fans--for a high school Final Four, in 1990. Boy legend Damon Bailey (recruited as an 8th grader by Bob Knight, which was unheard of in those days) had set the state scoring record and was going for his first state championship against Shawn Kemp and Concord. Down 6 with 2:38 to go, Bailey scored the last 9 points to lead Bedford North Lawrence to the crown. I still have an audio tape of the radio broadcast of that game.

To say that changing to multiclass tournament was controversial is an understatement. I'll elaborate more.

Mostly the change to multiclass was a money move. I also think that this move was a byproduct of a paradigm shift. When I was growing up, losing and learning how to deal with disappointment was a part of having to grow up. Kids got cut from Little League or the basketball team, or didn't get as much playing time. They dealt with it, worked harder so they didn't get cut the next time. Then over time, some psychologist determined that "we were hurting our youth", so we figured out how to make everyone feel good. Noncompetitive instructional leagues were formed. Everyone gets equal playing time. Everyone gets a "participation trophy" now. What happened to the ONE trophy that everyone wanted, everyone worked toward?

That's what happened to the IHSAA, imo

/end rant of a curmudgeon yearning for the good old days.

Any chance of posting that audio tape to youtube? I'd love to hear that.

I remember when Alan Henderson and Glenn Robinson were seniors and met in the state finals. One was going to Indiana, and one to Purdue, so the whole state had a rooting interest in the game. Indiana fans were devastated when Brebeuf got slaughtered by the Big Dog and Co.

Was it 1982 when Scott Skiles went off in the state finals and won the trophy?

The Festival used to be really cool in the 70's & 80's when the old Italian immigrants were still running things. Now that they're gone they just have the same old stuff as every other little town carnival. It's a shame. Used to love getting rosettes there and watching the Queen and her court stomp grapes.

More on the NCC, and HS basketball in general...

Yesterday I said 5 of the top 10 HS capacity gyms in the nation were in this conference. I was slightly wrong, it's 4 out of 11, although the capacity is listed differently in the NCC link in wiki, and gives Marion 6th place. 4 schools, however, is half of that conference.

Check this link out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest..._United_States

9 of the top 11 are in Indiana.

USA Today ranked New Castle's Chrysler Fieldhouse as the best home gym in the US. I disagree wholeheartedly. There was a sterileness to that place. The Wigwam, however, rocked. You could feel the gym move when 9000 people would start stomping their feet in unison, and smell the hot dogs and popcorn and sweat. I remember watching a game between the number 1 and number 2 teams in the state, both teams loaded with stars, and having to get tickets a week ahead of time. Got to the gym 3 hours before game time and still had to sit in the top 3 rows.

I also remember going to a regional game there in 1992. Conference rivals Anderson High and Muncie Central (at that time MC had a record 8 state championships) had come out of their sectionals and met in the first game of the regional. The Wigwam had seating on 3 sides of the court, with a large stage on one of the baselines. I sat in the upper level opposite the stage on the other baseline. One half of the gym was purple (MC), and the other half was green and red (Anderson). One team hit a basket, and half of the gym would explode, and then the other team would hit a basket and the other side of the gym would explode. Fantastic setting.

Anderson has since consolidated 3 city schools into 2, and now they will consolidate into one school. That makes me sad, to remember the rivalries, being an outsider looking in and listening to many magical games. When they closed Anderson High's building and moved Anderson High into the Madsion Heights High building (first consolidation), there were ordinances passed to keep the Wigwam intact IIRC.

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I seem to remember that Anderson very nearly ended up with a CBA team that would have played their home games in the Wigwam. I think they ended up going to Ft. Wayne, but it's been a while so my memory may be fuzzy. I do distinctly remember there were talks about it.

To think that a professional team would have ended up playing in a high school gymnasium is unthinkable, but their arena would have been able to handle it.

The NBA of the early to mid-90s was just so great. Legendary players everywhere you looked. Teams with solid 1-2 punches. Giant Centers roaming the paint. I think everyone my age just got spoiled by that era.

Drexler/Porter in Portland
Kemp/Payton in Seattle
Stockton/Malone in Utah
Robinson/Elliott in San Antonio
Barkley/KJ in Phoenix
Hakeem in Houston
Mullin/Hardaway/Sprewell/Webber all in GS at some point
Dikembe in Denver carrying that team to its historic 8 vs 1 upset

Jordan/Pippen Bulls
LJ/Mourning leading the up and coming Hornets
Price/Daugherty in Cleveland
Miller/Smits in Indiana
Ewing in NY
Shaq/Penny in Orlando
Riley trying to lead an arms race in Miami

I have such fond memories of that era despite the Bucks beign awful until the late 90s.

God that was a horrible night. We were on campus realizing that we had four years of that to look forward to. Still got a Final Four out of the Henderson/Cheaney/Graham teams though.

Indiana HS sectionals in the one class system were (loosely) based on a county or two's geographic location. Usually you had the big school in the county seat (or two or three), then each of the surrounding county schools. For example, our sectional consisted of New Castle, the three county schools (one of which was mine), and two even smaller schools, one of which was a school for troubled kids. Some of the state's sectionals had up to 16 schools in them in the decades prior, but by the time I was in HS, most of them had leveled out to no more than 8. You always knew going in to face the host school that you were going to get hosed by the referees, so in those rare instances where you actually beat the host school, it was just that much sweeter. My school won the sectional and regional when I was in 1st and 2nd grade, and beat two host schools both years to win those titles. As I mentioned, in 1981 (1st grade) we went to the final four (we beat Indianapolis Howe to win the semistate) and the whole school system shut down from about 9 AM to have a massive pep rally, kindergarten through 12th grade. The players signed autographs and everything.....

Before class basketball, we would schedule all the city schools around us, in an effort to make ourselves competitive for that one shot at sectional. We played all three Anderson schools, New Castle, one of the Muncie schools, and Richmond, to prep for it. Sure, our record wouldn't be great, but we were usually competitive in the sectional, even if we (inevitably) would get beat. Now, under the new system, we don't play any of these schools with the exception of New Castle (who was our big rival).

The sectional that Anderson hosted in the Wigwam was, year in and year out, one of the two or three best in the state. The three city schools, each with their own history of good/great teams, and the county schools (who usually weren't bad either) would fight in some of the most intense games you've ever seen. It was alluded to earlier when Alexandria was mentioned. In 1986, a small school, Daleville High, with about 150 enrollment, won this sectional. The center on that team ended up for a few months being my plant manager where I work now. We had a few good laughs remembering that. He told me he has never bought a beer in that town (2 or 3 bars), ever. People thank him for that title to this day.

The crazy thing was, I remember several years when the Anderson city schools would be all ranked in the top 20, and only one of them would come out of that sectional.

The other monster sectionals that I can remember were the sectionals in Ft Wayne, Gary, and the Hinkle sectional that had some of the Indianapolis city schools feeding into it. Hinkle Fieldhouse then hosted the Indianapolis regional and that was always a monster too.

It's also worth noting that the North Central Conference had at least one member make the final four for something like 18 out of 20 years in the 70s, 80s, and early 90s. That conference also has to have the most state champions too, with Marion having at least 5, Anderson 4 (?) and Muncie Central having 8. 7 of the 8 schools (Huntington North is the only one I know of that hasn't) have won state titles under the one class system.

I think this is a very large factor in why attendance is down, as well. Games that used to be regional final games are now first round Tuesday night sectional games. Who's going to drive 2 hours on a work night to watch this game, unless your son is on the team? Retirees, and people that are diehards and would watch you and me and 4 others play a 3 on 3 pickup game.

You also have the football factor....with the Colts being good, interest in football is up and basketball has taken a side seat. Competition for the entertainment dollar hasn't helped either.

Yea this is just stupid. I used to be a little league coach about 10 years ago. It was the same thing, all these sappy parents were happy all the kids got playing time and a trophy no matter what. But you also had some parents that would bitch and moan that their kids didn't play enough. There were like 40 kids on the team, most played an inning. My brother-in-law at the time was the manager and I was the 1B coach, assistant manager, ect. We both quit after a year, it was horrible.

My nephew played soccer every year since he was 5. Same crap, everyone plays, gets a trophy, ect. He got to HS and tried out for the soccer team as a freshman. My sister told me he got his ass handed to him the first day and started crying right there on the field, lol. He didn't like how the other players would fight him for the ball and push him around. I think he quit that day but I'm not sure.

Thanks for explaining how Indiana loves basketball.

Wait, how many of us ITT lived in Clinton?? Very odd.

There's a good chance if you ate a Rosette during that time, my mother was making them.

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We moved around Indiana growing up but before we ended up in Zionsville my mother was an assistant principal at Anderson Highland and I will agree that the sectional in Anderson (3 Anderson Schools, Frankton, Elwood, Alexandria at the time I was there) was the most intense week of the year when I was growing up. I got all the back room passes because my mom was an administrator and I felt like hot ****. It was like having backstage passes to the Stones.

My dad passed me a funny anecdote the other night when I called him. He was just home from 2 years in the Army during the state tourney in the mid 50s and he went to Hinkle to see Oscar Robertson (INDPLS Crispus Attucks, an all-black school) play in the Regional. He scalped a ticket for some ridiculous price and as soon as he got it a black man offered him what was then an astronomical $10 for the ticket. The guy had come to the game hoping to scalp but none of the scalpers were selling to black men. My dad told me he happily sold the ticket, bought another for like a dollar or whatever it cost back then and watched the game and then got drunk later. There is a lot of racial history in that tournament as well...

Also I've heard anyone that asks Larry Bird how his team went out of that tournament realizes he's probably as angry about that as any NBA loss or the NCAA title defeat he experienced.