J. Ronald Newlin

BLACK HISTORY NEWS AND NOTES J. RONALD NEWLIN 30 I TRACES I Fall 2016 BLACK HISTORY NEWS AND NOTES TRACES INDIANAPOLISI Fall 2016 I 31 STAR ITH THREE SECONDS TO GO IN THE BIGGEST GAME OF HIS LIFE, THE W YOUNG COACH FROM ZIONSVILLE, INDIANA, CALLED HIS LAST TIME-OUT. As his charges approached the bench, free-throw line, accepted the ball from thought, in hope or fear, “Oh, my God. the enormous crowd, which receded into the referee, and eyed what could be the That’s going in!” the dark corners of a vast building not clinching shot, as the crowd reached a The ball hit the backboard and car- designed for basketball, fell into a muted final crescendo. omed back true toward the rim—a touch rumble of exhausted anticipation. Most The opponent shot, and missed. A too strong. No good. The crowd roared of them were cheering for the local team, lanky sophomore forward from Browns- and groaned, and players from both an undersized squad from a small, private burg corralled the rebound for the local teams erupted from their benches, some school that had improbably earned its team and immediately turned to dribble embracing, others collapsing to the floor. way into a game of historic proportions. up the floor. The members of the opposing Goliath had survived, but by the smallest Throughout the game, using a tenacious team raced back, in front of or alongside of margins. defense and a patient, opportunistic him—an impromptu tactic more of ob- Most Indiana basketball fans will offense, they had stayed within striking struction than classic defense. recognize that vignette as the final seconds distance of their heavily favored opponent, As the ball handler approached mid- of the 2010 national championship game a blue-blood traditional power from the court, another member of the local team, between Duke University and Butler Uni- East Coast. a junior center from Connersville, saw an versity, played in Indianapolis’s Lucas Oil opponent racing Stadium; the young coach was Brad Ste- toward him with his vens and the sophomore and junior play- eyes on the dribbler. ers, respectively, were Gordon Hayward Instantly executing and Matt Howard. Over the course of two a familiar basket- hours and in its frenzied final seconds, that ball tactic called contest was the epitome of the nonstop “setting a pick” on action, the urgency, and the drama that an unfamiliar place has made basketball one of the world’s on the floor, he set favorite spectator sports. It was also, on a himself to absorb national scale, one of the top sports stories the impact of the of the year. Had Hayward’s half-court onrushing defender. shot gone in, it might have been the single The bodies collided most memorable moment in all of sports. and sprawled and That night ESPN.com’s Pat Forde wrote, for a split second, a “I thought we had attained basketball IHS, MARTIN PHOTO SHOP COLLECTION, P 129 SHOP PHOTO IHS, MARTIN fraction of the final nirvana—the greatest game-winning shot Previous Page: Butler University’s Gordon Hayward gets off a failed second of the game, in basketball history to climax the greatest last-second shot in the 2010 National Collegiate Athletic Association the ball handler had story in basketball history. And, what the championship game against Duke University. Above: The Wiley High School basketball team, Terre Haute, Indiana, 1931. an unobstructed heck, give us the greatest ending in athletic view of the basket, history.” Yet it appeared that the local team’s best fifty feet away. Mid-dribble, he launched But change a couple of place names chance for a victory had passed a few sec- the ball toward the goal, in a motion that here and there, and it just as easily could onds earlier with a missed shot. The game was astoundingly closer to a controlled shot have described earlier contests in Indi- was now down to desperate measures—the than to a running heave. ana’s basketball legacy. It could have been faint hope of a foul, a missed free throw, Hearts caught in every throat, and describing the final seconds of a col- and a score from the length of the floor, every eye followed the trajectory of the lege-division national championship game with three seconds remaining. ball as the horn sounded and the game featuring what is now the University of The teams reassembled on the floor. ended. In the split second that it descended Evansville in the 1960s or Indiana State The opposing player stepped to the toward the basket, thousands of people Teacher’s College in the 1940s—before 32 I TRACES I Fall 2016 A PERFECT MATCH IHS, BLACKFORD COUNTY PHOTOGRAPHERS COLLECTION, P 288 IHS Above: The Mount Comfort High School basketball team scrimmages in 1926. The man in the suit is J. B. Good, who served as the team’s coach and the school’s principal. Right: The Hartford City High School’s basketball team played without a coach or permanent home for years. This 1917 photograph is of the school’s junior squad, winner of an interclass tournament that year. or after the Sycamores’ young head coach, moment could have been from the first driveways, the shot executed by thousands John Wooden, took a job with the Uni- decade of the twentieth century, when Wa- of prospective Indiana legends, some of versity of California, Los Angeles. For that bash College consistently triumphed over whom did indeed go on to earn that title. matter, it almost could have described a touring teams from Harvard and Yale. Basketball has been called a uniquely game featuring Indiana State’s drive to the Change the schools from colleges American game, and it is certainly unique national championship game as an under- to high schools, and that all-or-nothing in the clarity of its origins. Unlike other rated Division I program in 1979, behind moment describes the end of countless sports that evolved gradually out of earlier Larry Bird. Or it could have been about Butler CHANGE THE SCHOOLS FROM COLLEGES TO itself, in any one of a number of games in HIGH SCHOOLS, AND THAT ALL-OR-NOTHING the 1920s, when its Hall of Fame coach Pat MOMENT DESCRIBES THE END OF COUNT- Page and his young protégé, Tony Hinkle, led the Bulldogs to championships in two LESS DAVID-VS.-GOLIATH GAMES IN THE national tournaments sponsored by the EPIC INDIANA HIGH SCHOOL STATE TOURNA- Amateur Athletic Union, and the north- MENT, INCLUDING THE ONE IMMORTALIZED side Indianapolis campus hosted frequent games against powerhouses of that era such IN THE MOVIE HOOSIERS. as Pittsburgh and Long Island. The only reason that it could not have described David-vs.-Goliath games in the epic forms of competition somewhere in the a Purdue University game in that era is Indiana High School Athletic Association’s mists of time, we know exactly when and because Purdue, coached by Ward “Piggy” state tournament, including the one im- where this game began. Doctor James Lambert and featuring such homegrown mortalized in the movie Hoosiers. Naismith, a Canadian-born instructor talent as Wooden, was almost never an It also played out several million at Springfield College’s school for Young underdog. Go back far enough, and that times in games in Indiana barnyards and Men’s Christian Association directors, sat TRACES I Fall 2016 I 33 A PERFECT MATCH down in December 1891 and composed it with his charges and with his peers in from within thirty miles of Crawfords- a set of rules for an indoor game to keep nearby Lafayette. By March of 1894, the ville—evidence in part that it took the his students’ interest during the winter Crawfordsville and Lafayette YMCAs game more than a couple of decades to months. We know the date of the first staged an intercity game that was covered capture a statewide following. demonstration of the game, the names of by the local media, and basketball as a But capture a following it certainly the players, and where most of them went spectator sport was born in Indiana. did. The notion that Indiana and basket- after graduation to spread their new gospel. Basketball did not immediately sweep ball were made for each other was firmly The popular narative is that one of Indiana like a lake-effect blizzard. There established by 1925, when Naismith Springfield’s students, Doctor Nicholas are a couple of instances where early attended a state tournament final at the McCay, brought basketball to his job run- adopters, such as the Indianapolis YMCA Indiana State Fairgrounds and supposedly ning the YMCA in Crawfordsville, sharing and Shortridge High School, established declared that basketball, while invented programs with ripple-effect in Massachusetts, “Really had its origin impact, but for the most part in Indiana, which remains today the sports pages, college campus- center of the sport.” (This quote is widely es, and early meetings of the attributed to a speech that Naismith gave Indiana High School Athletic at a return visit to Indiana for a YMCA Association, which was founded banquet in 1936.) in 1904, continued to focus on The mythology surrounding Indiana football, baseball, and track and basketball has only grown, aided by an ex- field. When a state high school panding national sports media. The myth basketball tournament was of Indiana basketball has developed along established and grew through- several lines. One is that Indiana loves out the decade of the 1910s, and supports basketball unlike any other the first seven champions were state or region.

Load more