Dave Krider looks back at 60 years of Indiana high school basketball

The Golden Era: Bobby Plump and Oscar Robertson

My 60-year love affair with Hoosier Hysteria began in 1954 as a 14-year-old freshman in front of our first tiny black-and-white television set. My family sat spell-bound watching tiny Milan stun mighty Muncie Central 32-30 on Bobby Plump's last-second, 15-foot jump shot following a long stall. It is still the most famous basketball game in Indiana history.

That clutch shot came before a capacity crowd of 15,000 at Butler University and paved the way for Plump to become a success in college and later in business. In 1995, for example, he opened a successful restaurant/sports bar in northeastern Indianapolis aptly named "Plump's Last Shot."

At least one man was known to have died of a heart attack while watching the game on television.

That team long ago was immortalized in the movie "Hoosiers," but Plump told me for my book that the only factual part of the movie was "the last 18 seconds." Indianapolis Star sports writer Bob Collins wrote (maybe not facetiously) that had Plump missed that shot he would have ended up "pumping gas in Pierceville (his tiny hometown)."

Like Vandivier and Wooden before him, Plump had his own unique story about growing up around the game. He and his friends grew a special toughness from playing on a farm where a manure pile lurked very close to the court. Players never called fouls and Plump admitted he landed in that pile many times.

He was quick to add, though, "But they didn't guard you too closely after that."

The next year I entered Elkhart High School as a sophomore and we opened North Side Gym, a fabulous palace which seated 8,200. It was listed in "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" as the largest high school gym in the world at that time. Our Blue Blazers had made their first Final Four the previous year, losing in the first round to Muncie Central, and were to make another Final Four trip my junior year.

Though I was just a fan, I quickly grew to love basketball and saw many great games at North Side over the years. Some years we sold 5,500 season tickets.

Milan had beaten a young Indianapolis Crispus Attucks team in the semistate and the next year Attucks emerged as a powerhouse, led by junior Oscar Robertson, whom I still rank as the greatest all-around player in Indiana history. Oscar led Attucks to back-to-back state titles and was named Mr. Basketball in 1956. He was an awesome passer with great moves and once scored a city-record 62 points in a single outing.

I still followed him during his brilliant career at the University of Cincinnati and I believe part of the reason I became a pioneer in covering high school sports nationally was to discover "the next Oscar Robertson." When I grew up there was little or no knowledge about prep athletes outside of our immediate area. You may have heard about some top players in your state, but that knowledge definitely ended at the border.

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