Hoosiers - Basis

Basis

The film is very loosely based on the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions, Milan High School ( /ˈmaɪlən/ MY-lən), but the term "inspired by a true story" may be more appropriate, as there was little the two teams had in common.

In most U.S. states, high school athletic teams are divided into different classes, usually based on the number of enrolled students, with separate state championship tournaments held for each classification. At the time, Indiana conducted a single state basketball championship for all of its high schools, and continued to do so until 1997.

Some elements of the film do match closely with those of Milan's real story. Like the movie's Hickory High School, Milan was a very small high school in a rural, southern Indiana town. Both schools had undersized teams. Both Hickory and Milan won the state finals by two points: Hickory won 42–40, and Milan won 32–30. The final seconds of the Hoosiers state final hold fairly closely to the details of Milan's 1954 final; the final shot in the movie was taken from virtually the same spot on the floor as Bobby Plump's actual game-winner. The movie's final game was shot in the same building that hosted the 1954 Indiana final, Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse (called Butler Fieldhouse in 1954) in Indianapolis.

Because of the presence of many sundown towns, the film obfuscates the racial reality of 1950s small-town southern Indiana. As one Indiana resident relates, "All southern Hoosiers laughed at the movie Hoosiers because the movie depicts blacks playing basketball and sitting in the stands at games in Jasper. We all agreed no blacks were permitted until probably the '60s and do not feel welcome today." A cheerleader for a predominantly white, but interracial Evansville high school, tells of having rocks thrown at their school bus as they sped out of Jasper after a basketball game in about 1975, more than 20 years after the events depicted in Hoosiers.

On the other hand, Afro-American basketball players appeared in Jasper gyms long before the 1950s. The professional New York Renaissance lost a game to the host Jasper Coca-Colas in 1936. Legendary Southern Indiana black basketball pioneer David "Big Dave" DeJernett took his integrated barnstorming ICC AllStars to Jasper for a 1935 game against the Cokes, splitting a home-and-away series. Thus it is incorrect to claim black basketball wasn't "permitted" in Jasper or other Southern Indiana towns before the 1950s.