Hoosiers Alert!

Norman Dale - overcoaching.

 

I aint no gizzard

 

Sorry, can't help my mouth.

 

I love Hoosiers as much as anyone, but you're right here. It's not like he took over a lousy team -- they had a plus-.500 record the year before. He also wasn't terribly sensitive about the trauma players might have felt over the old coach dying, but then again he only was in Hickory because he was a big asshole.

By the way, you can book your own game in the old Knightstown High gym that serves as Hickory's home gym. It's as cool as you'd think, with the Hoosiers team photo still up behind the west basket like it was at the end of the movie. It's attached to the old high school that thanks to the Hoosiers fame, got funding for Section 8 housing and a preschool (as well as paying for some updating of the infrastructure of the gym). When you see the Huskers running up and down the stairs to the gym, the preschool is at the bottom of those stairs. Knightstown itself is a beautiful little town, with a lot of renovated Victorian homes and a charming main street.

A friend and I shot around there with the guy who, at the time, ran the gym, a 70-ish retired pharmacist. He could still knock 'em down, too. Now THAT was an Indiana basketball kind of moment.

 

When I was at Mizzou, they still had the old Brewer fieldhouse standing at the back of the rec center. Old, old floor with deadspots, rickety hoops... we called em the Hoosier courts, for obvious reasons. I loved them, too, because so few people knew about them. If all the courts were busy, the hoosier courts never were... and I shot like a fiend in there.

 

Jesus, maybe you should change your handle to Two Balloons with that avatar.

 

She looks like she's ready to blow, eh?

 

Who created the thread showed SportsJournalists.com members' reaction had the Hoosiers state title game been on tv?

 

Even though I really do love the movie (I have the 20th annniversary DVD with the bonus disc and the original Milan-Muncie Central title game), I love to bug the more naive of my friends about how just about every single thing Norman Dale said he was going to do that year blew up on him:


1) He said he was going to go to Hickory, calm down, and behave himself. Instead he sets what have to be still-standing records for technical fouls, game ejections, and his team is involved in a full-court brawl in a tournament game.

2) He goes on and on about how the team doesn't need Jimmy Chitwood. So the team goes through half the season without Jimmy, is chugging along at about .500, then Jimmy joins the team and zoom, they're off to Indianapolis.

3) He goes on and on about "four passes before every shot." Of course, when Jimmy joins the team, that becomes "Give the ball to Jimmy and get the hell out of the way."

4) He says, "When it comes to this team, my word is law." Instead, with 10 seconds left in the championship game, he calls the picket-fence play for Merle to get the ball and shoot, and the whole team goes Scottie Pippen on him, and Jimmy Chitwood says "I'll make it," and Norman says, "OK."

5) He says he wants Shooter to "clean himself up" and straighten out. He does, for about four games, then he goes on a bender and wanders out on the court in a drunken stupor during a tournament game, then has to be shipped to the alkie ward at the nearest hospital.

6) At the first practices, Ollie the geek manager and Strap the chunky forward are shown to be klutzes. Norman says, "with this few players, we can't afford anyone who can't play." Still later in the season at tournament time, Ollie is forced into a game and kicks the ball off his foot twice in two trips down the court, then shoots an airball free throw before making two by utter luck. Strap goes in the game and everybody thinks it's an absolute act of God that he makes two layups. Even after a whole season under the tutelage of the Master Coach, both these guys are as horrible as ever.

 

Star, I'm not a big fan of hyperbole, but that might be one of the five funniest posts I've ever seen on this board.
Fantastic.

 

You forgot it was a player, not the coach, who noticed that focusing (setting up) on your star player in a big game just might work.

That said, his initial taking control of the team was spot on.

Ditching the zone was a great move.

 

Norman was overcoaching the last play. Merle? Give me a break. Get the ball to the stud and let him work it.
At Warsaw High School, in the trophy case, they have a picture of a WHS state championship team that included Steve Hollar, the guy who plays Rade in the movie. Next to it is a smaller copy of the Hickory team photo that hangs on the wall at the end of the movie. There's a net hanging on both pictures. I thought that was very cool.