The1954 Milan High School Indians won theIndiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament championship in 1954.[1]
With an enrollment of only 161,Milan was the smallest school to win a single-class state basketball title in Indiana, beating the team from the much largerMuncie Central High School in a classic competition known as theMilan Miracle. The team and town are the inspiration for the 1986 filmHoosiers. The team finished its regular season 19–2 and sported a 28–2 overall record.[2][3]
Unlike most states, Indiana held a single-class tournament in which all schools competed for the same championship in one of America's largest and most popular high school tournaments, until the separation into enrollment classes in 1997. Indiana still possessed a large rural population well into the 1950s and rural school consolidation was still in its infancy. As a result, most Indiana high schools of the era had what today are considered extremely small enrollments. Many of these small schools had realistic expectations of advancing several rounds into the tournament in that era, but they would almost inevitably fall in the regionals to urban schools from places such asSouth Bend,Evansville,Gary,Terre Haute,Muncie,Bloomington,Lafayette,Fort Wayne,Anderson andIndianapolis.[2]
Coach Marvin Wood had been hired two years earlier, at the age of 24, after a collegiate playing career atButler University and a coaching stint inFrench Lick. His hiring was controversial, coming on the heels of Superintendent Willard Green's firing of coach Herman "Snort" Grinstead, who had ordered new uniforms without authorization. Wood's coaching style was the opposite of Grinstead's in many ways. He closed practice to outsiders, an act that removed one of the major forms of leisure time entertainment for the town's basketball-crazed population and angered many. He was impressed by the unusual scope of size and talent available in such a small school among the many boys trying out for the team, talent forged by a strong junior-high program. He taught them more patience than the run-and-gun Grinstead, culminating in a four-corner ball control offense he called the "cat-and-mouse".[4]
Expectations were higher in the 1952–1953 season. These were realized as the Indians won their first regional game in school history under questionable circumstances againstMorton Memorial, an orphanage school outside ofKnightstown. In that game, Morton Memorial held a nine-point lead late in the game, only to lose in double-overtime as Milan's fourth quarter comeback was aided when the timekeeper delayed restarting the clock by a few seconds on one occasion.[5] Milan went on to shock the state by winning the 1953 regional title and sweeping the semi-state to advance to the final four, finally bowing out in a 56–37 semifinal blowout to the Bears ofSouth Bend Central High School. The nucleus of that team returned for the 1953–54 season with expectations of tournament success unprecedented for such a small school.
With four starters returning from the semifinalists, Milan was considered a lock to win both theRipley County tournament and the sectional. To prepare for the rigors of tournament play, Milan scheduled several games against larger, more prestigious schools, including a tournament atFrankfort, where they would suffer their first loss of the season, a 49–47 nail-biter against the hosts. Milan cruised through the rest of the schedule before suffering a late-season upset toAurora, who were also coming into a successful period in their basketball history.[4]
Anticipating a run deep into the later rounds of theIndiana High School Athletic Association boys basketball tournament, Milan expected to easily take the sectional before facing a tough test in the regional and a possible rematch against Aurora.
Milan83,Cross Plains36
Milan57,Versailles43
Milan44,Osgood 32
Milan58,Rushville34
Milan46,Aurora 38
Milan 44,Montezuma 34
Milan 65, IndianapolisCrispus Attucks 52
Milan60,Terre Haute Gerstmeyer Tech48
Milan32,Muncie Central 30
TheIndiana High School Athletic Association broke a longstanding tradition and awarded the Trester Award for mental attitude, sportsmanship, and character to a member of the winning team,Bobby Plump.
40,000 people descended on Milan (population: 1,150) the next day as the team returned home from Indianapolis, liningState Road 101 for 13 miles (21 km) to congratulate the Indians.
As schools consolidated throughout Indiana, the days of small-town success gradually ended. Fewer than half of the 751 schools entered in the 1954 tournament exist today. With increasedurbanization andsuburbanization throughout the state, Indiana schools became much larger and the urban schools that had the most success in the tournament increased their domination of the tournament. No school with an enrollment less than five times that of Milan's won the tournament again under the one-class system that was replaced with a multi-class tournament in 1997. The smallest school to win the state tournament after Milan wasPlymouth in 1982, led by futureNBA star and coachScott Skiles. Milan's enrollment is now over twice as large as it was in 1954.
Thirty-three years later, the filmHoosiers, a fictionalized account based on Milan's 1952–54 seasons, opened to positive reviews, renewing interest in the team and its legacy. The film combined game play from both the 1952–53 and 1953–54 seasons, merging the 1953 quarter-final opponent, the South Bend Bears, with the scoring pattern from the 1954 championship win against Muncie Central.
The2010 run ofButler—a university team that to this day plays its home games in the same building that hosted Milan's historic victory—to theFinal Four led to countless comparisons with both the 1954 Milan team and its cinematic alter ego of Hickory High. The Bulldogs stunned perennial powerMichigan State 52–50 in the national semifinal to make it to the National Title Game, where they lost toDuke 61–59. (Butler forwardGordon Hayward narrowly missed a last-second half court shot that would have won the game, and the national championship, for Butler.) Appropriately, the Milan team, all but one of whom were alive at the time of the tournament, attended the Final Four (held just up the road atLucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis) as guests of Indiana governorMitch Daniels.[6]
