DC Sports: Hoosier Hoops Hysteria

BY DC CUEVA                     
■ @DC408Dxtr  @ TW / IG / YT

We at DCBLOG hope you are enjoying the beginning to your week and our MTV Trifecta coverage. With this week's three Pulse diaries already posted and our WRAP still to come, we have something extra here to tap into something we cover sometimes on the side of our extensive MTV coverage in the sports world, which also taps into the Trifecta.

The calendar, as of last week, has just turned a page to the month of March, which means that the attention of sports fans bored with the end of the football season since last month's epic Super Bowl will soon be awakened by the sight of a simple utensil known as a bracket. Furthermore, there's the noise of cheerleaders and school bands, and the action in the arena that, come two weeks from now, will become the biggest event in this country.

   And for a member of the current cast of Season 5 of Are You The One?, he has been in love with the sport his whole life, and with what has just happened to him on last week's episode it gave us here at DCBLOG the chance to share you his fandom.

On this hybrid of our ExtraTime franchise for our signature MTV Trifecta coverage and our Sports posts we do on the side here, we will look at the fascination the state of Indiana has with the sport of basketball, and offer a look at one of those who shares that Hoosier Hoops Hysteria.

Indianapolis is one of America's great sports cities, and serves as home to the headquarters to a number of major sports operating and governing bodies. It's one of the hubs of this county's Olympic movement, home to organizations whose sports come to the public limelight every two years, and who welcomed the world 30 years ago this summer when it hosted the Pan American Games - typically the place where the next generation of Olympic stars make their debuts on the world stage.

   Ten years ago, Peyton Manning and the Colts brought the city its first world title when they won Super Bowl XLI in the South Florida rain...and in 2012, it welcomed the Super Bowl for the first time. This was where Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier first took to the ice for the Indianapolis Racers in the old World Hockey Association, well before NHL greatness. And of course, every Memorial Day weekend for 100 times this region has come to a standstill for the spectacle known as the Indianapolis 500 at the Brickyard in this motor sports hub.

Credit: Chris Crawford Photos

   But despite all that, there's one sport that Hoosiers can proudly call their own. Texans have a mania for football, Iowans for collegiate wrestling, Minnesotans for hockey, New Yorkers for baseball and Las Vegans with fight sports. And here in Indiana, you'd probably won't go anywhere in this state without seeing someone with a ball shooting towards a hoop - either in town streets or most especially with a ring fixated to the back of a barnyard house on a cornfield. The ladder is a common site in a state where its state capital is nicknamed "The Crossroads of America," as several major Interstate highways go through Indianapolis.
   Three decades ago, the movie Hoosiers was released, which was based on the improbable rise of Milan High School in the state's southeastern part - and with an enrollment of only 161 students - facing Muncie Central High School outside of Indianapolis and with a roll call of 1,600 in the 1954 state championship game. With Bobby Plump's buzzer beater, David beat Goliath as the Indians became the smallest school ever to hoist the title trophy inside the revered Hinkle Fieldhouse, which opened in 1928 and was designated a National Historical Landmark shortly after that film's release. It has taken on status of being one of the best sports films ever made - even being classified at the Library of Congress, and best exemplifies the hysteria Hoosiers have with basketball.

HIGH SCHOOL HOOPS

For the truest measure of why hoops is treated like religion in Indiana, you'd have to go to any of the state's nearly 400 local high schools on a winter's Friday night to see gymnasiums packed to the rafters to watch young boys and girls play on the court. And though it was invented by a Canadian in a New England gymnasium 126 years ago, basketball seems tailor made for those in Hoosier country...and the roots of the game in the state are planted everywhere you go in this state. James Naismith was the most interested of the 15,000 who watched the 1925 state finals and would write afterwards, "Basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport."

   Before school consolidation in the latter half of the 20th century, basketball was seen as more of the ideal sport for schools in needing only a fraction of a football or baseball team has to suffice a team who could compete on the court. Today, high schools in the state have maintained a proud tradition of boasting top-class basketball players who have gone on to the NBA. Over 150 players with native ties to Indiana have played in the world's richest basketball league, and when you consider that the total population of the entire state - roughly 2% of the entire country - would rank 2nd only to New York City, Indiana high schools are far and away the most successful in developing NBA players per capita: 22 players - more than one for every 150,000 male residents.

New Castle High School's gym

   Texas is known for its passion for high school football in it being home to the largest stadiums in the sport's lower tier along with, of course, the movie Friday Night Lights. Indiana is basketball's equivalent as far as gymnasiums go in them being the largest in the country and the sheer number and size of the venues for battle on a Friday night in winter. It goes hand in hand with every high school's passion and commitment to basketball in the state being home to nine of the ten largest high school gyms in the U.S., and seventeen schools in the state having seating capacities of over 6,000. The largest of these is at New Castle High School east of Indianapolis at just over 9,300 - half of the town's population.

   The basis of the plot line for Hoosiers was rooted in Indiana's annual high school basketball tournament, still one of the state's most revered sporting events. From its beginning in the 1920's until 20 years ago, this tournament was rooted in English soccer's FA Cup: a simple event where any team from high schools large and small from cities and towns statewide could enter and where any one of them can possibly win. The Milan Miracle aside, those who've won the state title have seen many great teams: the Franklin Wonder Five were the first to win three straight state titles in the '20s, while in 1955 Crispus Attacks High School became the first all-black school to win an all open state basketball championship, led by the great Oscar Robertson.
   In 1997 as the gap between urban and suburban schools had been widened for a long time, the Indiana High School Athletic Association made the controversial decision to disband the single-class system and went to multiple classes to determine multiple state champions instead of one. Many lamented the loss of this manner of determining the state's best basketball team, but this passion known affectionately as "Hoosier Hysteria" hasn't been completely diminished. The state tournament has remained the most-attended high school basketball event in the country, and it reaches its crescendo in Indianapolis as Bankers Life Fieldhouse hosts the championship & Final Four games.

   And for me, Indiana high school hoops is familiar in having listened for the past decade or so to a site based in Northwestern Indiana which webcasts live games of the Bulldogs of Crown Point High School, whose most notable alum in recent years was Spike Albrecht, who led the Michigan Wolverines to the 2013 NCAA national championship game.

THE COLLEGE GAME

While it's high school basketball that lives and breathes the strongest passions of Hoosier hoops hysteria, the college game can also boast its own tradition and passion to add a layer of depth to the sport here. Eleven colleges and universities are members of the NCAA, and a twelfth, Vincennes University, is a perennial favorite in the seldom-covered junior college game. Of course, all eyes are on the glamour of NCAA Division I men's ball, and six schools are represented at the top level of the college sports pyramid, including Ball State, Evansville, IUPUI and IPFW, plus D-II school Southern Indiana and D-III school Wabash.

   The team with the most history is the Indiana Hoosiers who have won five NCAA National Championships - three under legendary & controversial coach Bobby Knight, and who remain the last Division I men's team to go through a season undefeated: 32-0 when they won the 1976 title. The team ranks in the top five in most titles won and a 2012 study listed Indiana as college hoops' third most valuable program, despite troubles in the past decade. Their court, Assembly Hall, is regarded by Knight as "a sacred place" in Bloomington, while longtime March Madness voice Gus Johnson calls it "the Carnegie Hall of basketball," and is one of the loudest arenas in the college game.

   In 1979, Terre Haute - west of Indianapolis - was brought into the spotlight when a man from the southern town of French Lick by the name of Larry Bird brought out of national obscurity the Indiana State Sycamores. In front of a national audience, he notched 49 points and 18 rebounds as the team went undefeated and went all the way to the NCAA title game where they met their match in Michigan State. They succumbed to the Spartans as Bird played against Magic Johnson for the first time in front of college basketball's largest ever TV audience. Then in 1998 came a memorable Tournament run by Valparaiso marked by a buzzer-beater by coach's son Bryce Drew.

Hinkle Fieldhouse

   And in 2010 came another Cinderella story - this time from the team who calls Hinkle Fieldhouse home: the Butler Bulldogs came in as a 5 seed from the mid-major Horizon League after two prior trips to the Sweet 16. But utilizing a style of team play coined as "the Butler Way," and with words in their locker room of playing with humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness, it brought them to the national championship vs. Duke in the home court of Lucas Oil Stadium. And they nearly pulled off a modern-day Milan Miracle: Gordon Hayward's last second heave rattled the rim and they fell short. But they proved that was no fluke: they made it back to the Final Four the next year.

   It's not just those schools who've made solid impact: despite having won their only national title in the pre-Tournament era, Purdue has remained a basketball power, serving as John Wooden's first home before his storied tenure as UCLA coach and with one women's title. Up north, there's Notre Dame who's had success with the women in five straight title game appearances in recent years, and the men being frequent spoilers to #1-ranked teams: 12 times they have upset the nation's top team and most have taken place on their home court of the Joyce Center: the most notable being in 1974 in ending UCLA's 88-game win streak against Coach Wooden. And one of American sports' most unique traditions take place here each December, as Taylor University northeast of Indianapolis hosts Silent Night, a men's game where the crowd is silent until the home team scores their 10th point.

   And it's because of Indiana's proud basketball heritage that gave the NCAA reason at the turn of the century to move its headquarters and Hall of Champions to Indianapolis for several reasons. The "Amateur Sports Capital of the World" has hosted a number of college basketball events including the Big Ten Tournament in recent years, plus the 2002 FIBA World Championship. But of course, no event provides the kind of big time interest of the country more than the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship, which culminates with the Final Four and makes everything from filling out brackets to watching upsets and buzzer beaters aplenty the norm every spring.

   Seven times has Indianapolis hosted the final phase of March Madness, along with having also hosted many regional rounds of the tournament over the years. Starting in 1980 at the old Market Square Arena, and on a regular basis since 1991 and Duke's first national title inside the RCA Done, the Crossroads of America has been where "The Road Ends Here." The NCAA cited the world-class infrastructure of the city's sports facilities as reason to not move their headquarters here, but also to host a Final Four every 5-to-6 years, with 2021 its next date after stops in '97, '00, '06, '10 & '15 - the past two at Lucas Oil Stadium.

PROS: Pacers, Fever & More

And then, there's the pros. The origins of American professional basketball date back to 1925 when the American Basketball League was formed, and the Fort Wayne Hoosiers were one of its charter members. It wasn't until 1937 that a successful pro league was formed during this time of college basketball being top dog, when General Electric, Firestone and Goodyear helped create the National Basketball League around the Great Lakes region.

   During the twelve years between the NBL's first season and its eventual merger with the Basketball Association of America to form the NBA in 1949, several teams from Indiana played in the old days representing Anderson, Fort Wayne, Hammond, Indianapolis and Warren. The Fort Wayne Pistons were the only Indiana team to make it to the post-merger NBA, but given the city's size they would ultimately move up to Detroit in 1957, two years after a trip to the NBA Finals.

Bankers Life Fieldhouse

   In 1967, the pro game returned here when a group of six entrepreneurs were among the lucky winners in the race to become charter members of the American Basketball Association. The league's unique style of emphasizing a wide-open, offensive-driven style of play with the introductions of the three-point shot, the slam dunk contest and the multi-colored ball helped change the game forever. And during the league's short but exciting decade-long existence, the Indiana Pacers were the class of the ABA. Five times did the Pacers make it to the ABA Finals, and three times they won it all: the most successful team in league history.
   As one of the four former ABA teams that joined the NBA in 1976, the Pacers would struggle, and were also on the short end of notable draft day steals and player trades. In 1987, the Pacers opted to draft a UCLA alum named Reggie Miller instead of Hoosier native son Steve Alford, then drafted Chuck Person and later traded for Detlef Schrempf. They would become the foundation for the club's turnaround into relevance in the Association, where under coaches Larry Brown and Larry Bird, plus the additions of Mark Jackson, Rik Smits and others, they would become consistent playoff contenders - making it to the NBA Finals in 2000. The era became notable for their legendary playoff battles with the New York Knicks: Reggie Miller's 25-point barrage in Madison Square Garden in front of super-fan Spike Lee, then an eight-point comeback also in the same arena a year later.

   From dealing with adversities of the infamous fight in Detroit in 2004 to one of their own, Paul George suffering an off-season injury in a Team USA exhibition more than a decade later, the Pacers have overcome those to still be an elite franchise in the Association - still under the ownership of Simon Malls founder Herb Simon. But it's not just about the Pacers here: in 2000, the Indiana Fever began play in the WNBA and led by Tamika Catchings have been consistent top performers in the women's game - gaining something their NBA counterparts have never been able to achieve: their ultimate goal of the WNBA title in 2012. And things have come full circle in Fort Wayne as the Mad Ants play in the NBA's D-League, who won the league title in 2014.

FANDOM: AYTO's HAYDEN

IG @Hayden.Parker.Weaver

And that leads us to the root of why this basketball fan wrote this post and what this links Indiana's passion for hoops to another strong passion of mine in the MTV Trifecta. Before he was cast on the current 5th season of MTV's Are You The One?, for which he was part of the most recent perfect match last week, Hayden Weaver had already become one of the state's most die-hard hoops fans.
   When he was a junior at Anderson High School northeast of the Circle City, he led the student section at both home and road games, and in his senior year donned the school mascot's uniform of an Indian costume with no shirt on...and was named "Most Spirited" in his yearbook. He is a big Butler fan who still ponders what could've been had Gordon Heyward's half-court heave found the net instead of hitting the rim. And when not tweeting anything related to the love-fest, he is usually active discussing and tweeting anything related to basketball... one of his tweets even got a SportsCenter shoutout.
   For the best example of Hayden's hoops fandom, it would have to be of the hometown Pacers. The amount of games he has attended at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, and sometimes on the road too, number in the triple-digits. He sat courtside in front of Paul George, boasted a sign mocking LeBron James during the 2014 Playoffs (pictured above) and have met a number of people from the Pacers, both in the arena and off including lifelong Pacer and CBS March Madness analyst Clark Kellogg. And in one of his Instagram videos, he even made a half-court shot much like the guys who've made a career of making those difficult trick shots look easy in the Dude Perfect guys.

Haters will say it’s fake #SendIt pic.twitter.com/OIruCXbIjj

— Hayden Weaver (@HaydenPWeaver) January 7, 2018

In 2012, when Area 55 - a fan group led by then-Pacers player Roy Hibbert - held auditions for fans to join those elite group of super fans in section 101 of the Fieldhouse's lower tier, Hayden sent an audition video in the hopes that he would be chosen to be one of those who would cheer loudly and chant proudly. We've embedded both edits of Hayden's Area 55 videos below.

Hayden is not alone. Many others - both Hoosier natives and those born elsewhere who now reside in Indiana - share the sentiment that basketball is Indiana's game. Jeff Teague played high school ball in Indianapolis before going down to another basketball hotbed: Tobacco Road to play for Wake Forest before being drafted by the Atlanta Hawks. And he believes basketball truly hits home back where he started his journey: "I think everybody grows up playing basketball here (in Indiana). There's a court on every driveway, a court in every backyard. It's just like a religion almost.”
   And for the Pacers' biggest star, Paul George agrees with his rival, despite growing up north of Los Angeles: "Even driving out to the country, you’ll see basketball goals on barns or just stuck on a pole with a wooden backboard, so, you know it’s a sport that everybody loves out here and again, there’s a lot of hidden talent out here. The fans, they’re real knowledgeable. They know the game. It’s not like they’re just fans of the players. They’re fans of the game. They actually know the game, so I think that’s what keeps them so loyal is that they just respect the game."
   Basketball has brought generations of Hoosiers together, both young and old, into high school gyms, college fieldhouses and NBA arenas in Indianapolis, the state's 15 other metropolitan areas, its nearly 120 incorporated cities, 450 towns, and smaller non-Census designated areas too. The passion PG-13, Teague, Hayden and the state's 6.6 million residents have for hoops is undeniable, from those winter Fridays to the madness that's about to take this country later this month, to the big stage the Pacers get to play on from late fall to springtime. Hoosier Hoops Hysteria is everywhere here.

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Tomorrow before this week's episodes air, DCBLOG's look at the week in the MTV Trifecta concludes with our WRAP of last week's episodes, including a trip into the Strategy Room of what's next for Hayden and his Are You The One? cast, plus meet the new best friend of a Challenge underdog. And with rumors surfacing that Hayden may be on the cast of the new AYTO All-Star Challenge as well, we'll be previewing that season in the coming weeks before it premieres on March 22. On a side note, the AYTO season finale and reunion are slated for March 15...which is the night before the first round of this year's NCAA Tournament gets underway.
   Thank you for checking out this look at Indiana basketball, and be on the lookout for a series of sports posts coming later this year to DCBLOG. And make sure to rejoin us tomorrow when we resume our coverage of the MTV Trifecta. Talk to you then.

- I AM DC

Bibliography: Washington Times, Wikipedia, ESPN.com, Indianapolis Star, Instagram, YouTube

Update: Revised December 8, 2017 to include Taylor University's Silent Night tradition, and January 14, 2018 to include Hayden's Dude Perfect shot