Hoosier Hysteria

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Indiana's passion for basketball was observed and written about by basketball's inventor, James Naismith. In 1925, Naismith visited an Indiana basketball state finals game along with 15,000 screaming fans. He later wrote that while it was invented in Massachusetts, 'basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport'. In the 1954 Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament, underdog Milan, with just an enrollment size of 161 students, defeated the heavily favored Muncie Central to win the state title. The 1986 David Anspaugh film Hoosiers, starring Gene Hackman, is loosely based on the 1954 tournament. Since the late 20th century, numerous basketball stars have generated excitement and fan generation in Indiana. One of these players, Larry Bird, became one of the most marketed and popular Indiana athletes in history due to his play for the Indiana State Sycamores from 1976 to 1979, and for his head coaching tenure for the Indiana Pacers from 1997 to 2000. Players such as Reggie Miller and Jalen Rose became popular during the 1990s, with Rose drafted in 1994, years before Bird's coaching tenure. In the 21st century, athletes such as Caitlin Clark, Paul George and Tyrese Haliburton have generated similar excitement to a lesser degree. The Caitlin Clark effect has particularly generated excitement around the Indiana Fever of the WNBA.

In Their Own Story

The Indiana tournament is still the most attended in the nation, with final four games for the two larger divisions regularly selling out Gainbridge Fieldhouse (formerly Conseco Fieldhouse and Bankers Life Fieldhouse).

Reader's Guide

High school basketball: Through the 2009-2010 NBA season, 152 Hoosier athletes have played professional basketball in the world's top league. Considering the size of the state (population 6.4 million), this makes Indiana high schools by far the most successful at developing NBA players per capita. Today there are 22 Hoosiers in the NBA - more than one for every 150,000 male residents. In 2017, Indiana natives won the NBA and D-league Slam Dunk Contests, NBA and D-league 3-point contests, and won runner-up in the NBA Skills Challenge. Historically, each of the several hundred small towns of Indiana had its own small school system. Before consolidation of many of these rural school districts in the last half of the twentieth century, Indiana high schools had fewer students than those of most other states; basketball was a natural game for these schools since it only required five starters and a few reserves and even a few great players could make a strong team. The Franklin Wonder Five, led by Fuzzy Vandivier, was the first team to win the state championship in three consecutive years, from 1920 to 1922. This accomplishment would not be matched for over six decades. After Milan's Miracle in the 1950s, no school with an enrollment of less than 500 won another boys' State title under the all-comers format. As school consolidation became more common and as more rural residents migrated to cities making large high schools grow even larger, smaller high schools had only a mismatch to look forward to come tournament time, as success concentrated in Indiana's large urban and suburban schools. Starting with the 1997–1998 season, Indiana established a controversial four-class system for its basketball championship, although many other sports remain single-class. The state's move to this new system has, to some extent, diminished the phenomenon and public opinion is widely split on the merits of 'class basketball.' Aside from the 'Milan Miracle,' the story of Crispus Attucks High School ranks as one of the greatest in Indiana high school basketball tradition. In 1955, the year after Attucks had lost in the semistate final (state quarterfinals) to Milan's championship team, Attucks gained fame by winning the Indiana state championship, becoming the first all-black school in the nation to win a state title open to all schools regardless of race. Crispus Attucks repeated a

Did You Know?

• James Naismith, basketball's inventor, visited an Indiana state finals game in 1925 and wrote that 'basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport'.
• The 1954 Milan High School team, with only 161 students, defeated heavily favored Muncie Central to win the state title, inspiring the film Hoosiers.
• Crispus Attucks High School became the first all-black school in the nation to win a state title open to all races in 1955, led by Oscar Robertson.
• The 1990 state championship game drew a paid attendance of 41,046, one of the largest crowds for a high school basketball game, though not the largest ever.
• Indiana has nine of the ten largest high school basketball gymnasiums in the country, with the largest being New Castle Fieldhouse seating 9,325.