Rare Footage of Original Hoosiers Released

Yahoo Sports reports on newly released footage of the 1954 Indiana state high school championship basketball game that inspired the movie Hoosiers:

Of all the great movies involving American sports, few are more ingrained in the nation's culture psyche than 'Hoosiers'. The film gave Indiana high school basketball a national profile, it romanticized how tournament basketball can lionize the little guy and set the stage for much of the popular mythology that engulfs America each March during the NCAA Tournament.

Now, rarely seen footage of the final minutes of the famous game that inspired the movie has been put online, thanks to the Indiana High School Athletic Association. As first brought to Prep Rally's attention by Jeff Eisenberg of our fabulous brotherly college basketball blog, The Dagger, the final three minutes of the 1954 state title game between Muncie (Ind.) Central High and Milan (Ind.) High was re-released by the IHSA over the past week, showing us just what Bobby Plump (or Jimmy Chitwood in 'Hoosiers' parlance) and his teammates looked like while pulling off one of the most famous upsets in American sports history.

There's no code to bring the video on to sites outside the IHSAA portal, but you can see the entire closing sequence right here.

Yahho reminds us that Milan High School, which won the game, had only 162 students, while Muncie had 10 times that many. Below is A. O Scott's NYT review of the movie: