Perfection on various courts

I love the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

Mostly, anyway. Really, I love the existence of and idea of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

The execution of the Hall, though, is sadly dated and a bit stale.

Yes, I loved watching the introductory slide show the first time I saw it, but that was twenty-some years ago when the Hall opened.

And many of the exhibits were interesting...the first time.

I've, in fact, thought about donating a couple days of my summer time to help the Hall do some of the grunt work around the place, relabeling, correcting, dusting, whatever-they-needing.

I am more than excited (ecstatic, joyous, bubbly, thrilled), however, that the Hall is filming a replacement introductory video.

They've been filming some pretty impressive, Indiana basketball greats (both men and women) in some pretty outstanding locations...

• Damon Bailey in Bedford's gym (wish they'd visited Seymour High School)
• Larry Bird in...maybe his restaurant in Terre Haute
• Oscar Robertson in...maybe his house
• Steve Alford in the New Castle Fieldhouse, largest high school gym in the world and one of my favorite sports venues
• George McGinnis in Indianapolis Washington High School
• Bobby Plump in Hinkle Fieldhouse
• Stephanie White in Banker's Life Fieldhouse
• Katie Douglas (ok, I don't know her) in Southport High School's gym
• Judi Warren (1st Miss Basketball) in Hinkle Fieldhouse

Check out the photos on their Facebook post about the new film. Here are a couple of my favorites.

Requium for a way of life

Nice tour of New Castle's Chrysler fieldhouse, the largest high school gymnasium in the world. The fieldhouse seats 9325 people over at Max Preps.

It's awesome.

"Hoosiers revisited" visited

A couple of weeks ago Calen and I went to New Castle High School to see the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame Classic tournament - won by Greensburg in two impressive performances - and stopped by the Hall of Fame and museum across the parking lot. While we were there we tried watching "Hoosiers revisited", a video playing in the museum.

Luckily there was a sign saying the video was available on YouTube.

And, yeah, I have something in my eye. There's an eyelash. Shut up...

And, man, I need to gets to Knightstown.

It's like Ron Cougar Mellencamp says...

Larry and Bill...heaven...

Holy crap did I enjoy watching this.

I could listen to Bird talk basketball forever, and bringing in Bill Simmons to lead Larry...wow...

Simmons is enough of a fanboy to play to Bird's ego, but he's also knowledgeable enough to push Bird to some interesting places.

Watch this today.

Survival...barely...

Had a blast at UDayton Arena today. Two very close games...

Much happier when it was OSU in trouble. I've nothing invested in them.

Terrified for most of the IU-Temple game, but IU survived...thankfully.

Dangerous thoughts

After last night's win, I'm starting to dream of a sixth banner...

Source

The cream and crimson!

Congratulations to the Indiana Hoosiers men's soccer team who won the NCAA D1 title this past Sunday.

That makes an even eight titles for Indiana, more than every team but St Louis U. The Billikens, however, haven't won since 1973 - when they won their tenth title in the first fifteen titles that the NCAA awarded.

Hail to the cream and crimson

Great story about Indiana's victory over UK over at ESPN.

Congrats to the Hoosiers for an awesome victory and what is hopefully a first reappearance on the national stage.

from Chicago Tribune

from Indy Star

from ESPN

both from Vigilant Sports

The man with three names

SeeqPod - Playable Search

And in honor of my Hoosier brother, enjoy Lil' Johnny Cougar...

The king is dead, long live the dream

Over the past week or two, I've mentioned The Hometown's high school basketball team. They made it through the regular season undefeated (22-0) and then won their first four post-season games, making it to the final four of 4A teams in Indiana.

On Saturday (today as the date of the blog suggests, yesterday as I type this entry) the dogs ran into a buzzsaw and couldn't recover from their poor (6 of 19) free throw shooting in a 51-41 loss to an unranked Brownsburg team at the Southport Semistate.

Much sadness around here, and The Blog will be wearing black for a while in mourning.

Feel free to check out more details here, here, or here and photos here, as well.

Ah, but therein lies the difference

Somehow I don't see the firing/resignation of Kelvin Sampson spurring the same freakish, angry loyalty among IU supporters as did the firing of the General.

There might be protests against the morons who hired Sampson, but I'm doubting there's a lot of anger over IU cutting ties with the cheatin' so-and-so.

Back Home Again in Indiana

...where it seems that I can see the gleemingly fleuorescent lights,

still shining bright on the roundball for me...

I spent Friday at the biggest high school gymnasium in the United States - the New Castle Chrysler Fieldhouse, home to the New Castle Spartans and 9,314 seats. Got to see my alma mater win the tourney, taking the victory in the #1 vs #2 matchup in the morning session. Got to hang out with the The Pater Familias and The Sister. Even got to visit the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame for an hour or so.

It was a pretty good day, all in all, in spite of the spitting rain. Heck, the weather was far better than the weather has been during a lot of the other Hall Classics. The only thing missing was a trip to the Hickory Gym to make it an true orgy of Hoosier hysteria.

Indiana high school basketball is something that's legendarily famous, and its history is a pretty amazing thing - in spite of some significant changes that have come along since the move from a single-class system. I have a number of very fond memories of watching basketball in New Albany's gym (seating a then-paltry 4701 Bulldog fans) from the catwalk above the floor or up at the top of the three-story bleachers, supervised by an older family friend.

Basketball in Indiana certainly is something special, the kind of special that most small towns in the midwest are familair with. In Ohio, it might be football that brings the town together, but in Indiana, it's very clearly basketball.

In modern times, it's not quite the world of Hoosiers where the whole town gets together on Friday night, but it's certainly still the case that every varsity basketball game - especially in smaller towns - draws enough of the town that it's usually the big event that night.

Basketball is still king in Indiana, and no matter now many high school basketball games I go to in Ohio, it's just not the same.

During my first year teaching in Ohio, I took The Girl to a boys basketball game at Mount Healthy High School where I was teaching at the time. After my initial interview, the principal commented on how proud of their big gym they were. When we got to the game, The Girl's first side comment to me was a simple "where's the main gym", because Mt Healthy's gym wasn't even half the size of our high school's gym.

I miss Indiana high school ball.

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In researching this post, I did stumble on a future road trip idea in the works. Could be kinda cool to see the games in all the Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky gyms. And I don't think it would be all that hard, either.