All Indiana! Our Game: Hoosier Hysteria

On The Eve Of The Tournaments, Some Basketball Trivia & Tibits

It’s been over a century since that first state high school basketball tournament, and the Hoosier State does not appear to be slowing down.

-Sectionals of the 103rd Annual Boys State Tournament tips off this week at schools throughout the state.

-Having recently wrapped up Semi-States, the 38th Annual Girls Basketball State Tournament awaits the finals on March 2nd in Terre Haute.

-College basketball’s regular season is entering its final two weeks before conference tournaments begin.

So to get ready for Hoosier Hysteria and March Madness, here are some basketball-related tidbits about our state:

Coach John Wooden

Successful Hoosiers at All Levels

  • Perhaps the most famous coach in all of basketball – Martinsville, Indiana’s own John Wooden – played and coached in the Indiana state basketball tournament.  His Martinsville high school team appeared in three state championship games, winning in 1927.  After a brief coaching stint in Dayton, Kentucky, Wooden coached South Bend Central High School for nine years. His high school coaching record?  A staggering 218-42.
  • Bedford North Lawrence and Indiana University star Damon Bailey appears twice in the top 15 season scoring leaders.  He followed up his 872-point effort in 1987-88 with a 972-point state championship season in 1989-90.
  • Steve Alford has had March Madness success throughout his career. In 1982-83, he scored 1,078 points for his New Castle team – one shy of the all-time record.  In 1986-87, he helped his Indiana University team to its fifth national championship.  And as a coach, he’s taken three different schools to the NCAA tournament: Southwest Missouri State, Iowa, and New Mexico.

High School Tournament Trivia

  • The first organized state basketball tournament was held in 1911, a mere 20 years after the sport’s invention by Dr. James A. Naismith.
  • Muncie Central, the school that opposed Milan High School in the famed 1954 state championship game that inspired the movie Hoosiers, has the most all-time state championships, with 8 – all of which came in the single-class tournament.
  • Of schools that have won multiple state championships, Bloomington South holds the record for the longest span of time in between titles: 90 years (1919-2009).
  • 13 of the 15 largest high school gymnasiums in the country are located in Indiana.  Most would be sufficiently sized for a college basketball team.

Indiana College Trivia

-There are 10 Division 1 college basketball teams in Indiana – 6 public and 4 private.

-Indiana University leads all colleges in the state with 36 tournament appearances, capped off by 5 national championships.

-IPFW has never been to the NCAA tournament.  It has only played Division 1 sports since 2001.

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