Quote:
Originally posted by Did you just call me Coltrane?
I don't think "Hoosiers" was that far off from the real Milan story. Milan did beat a predominantly black team, although in the quarterfinals, not the championship game.
From wiki:
"In the state championship scene, the movie portrays Muncie Central (South Bend Central in the movie; Milan had lost to South Bend Central in the 1953 state semifinals) as a predominantly black team. The real Muncie Central was a predominantly white team with three black members. The movie probably borrowed from the actual history of the 1954 state quarterfinals, in which Milan defeated the segregated Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis led by all-time great Oscar Robertson, then a sophomore. In the movie the Muncie/South Bend coach is played by Ray Crowe, who coached Crispus Attucks in 1954 and would lead the team the next year, 1955, to become the first all-black team to win the state championship. The Attucks team, with Crowe as coach and Robertson as floor leader, would repeat as state champions in 1956."
My response was, of course: holy shit, Milan beat Oscar Robertson?
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Uh, ok. But I think the focus of the article's was essentially why they chose to make a movie back then about Milan beating an all-black team instead of a movie about the first all-black team to win the state championship, which is the movie they'd make now.
(Don't get me wrong. I love Hoosiers.)
TM
