Last weekend the Butler University Bulldogs made school history by beating #2 seed Kansas State. This will be the Butler’s first trip to the Final Four in school history. To make things even sweeter, the Bulldogs will be playing in front of a home crowd in Indianapolis. Butler is truly a Cinderella story.

But there’s even more to Butler’s story.

As I mentioned, Butler University is located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Anyone who follows sports knows that Indiana is a basketball state with a deep, rich tradition. Larry Bird, Bobby Knight, Calbert Cheaney, Shawn Kemp, Kenny Lofton, Oscar Robertson, Chuck Taylor and John Wooden are all famous Hoosier Hoopsters.

In addition to real life basketball legends, Indiana inspired arguably the greatest sports movie of all time, Hoosiers. Hoosiers is the story of a small, rural high school basketball team (Hickory) that wins the Indiana state basketball championship. Hickory High, coached by Norman Dale (Gene Hackman), was undersized and out-maned, but they overcome their underdog status to win the 1951 Indiana state basketball tournament.

Don’t worry, I’m gettting to my point. So, the championship game in the movie was filmed at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, which is Butler’s home court. When it was built in 1928 it was the largest basketball arena in the country and retained that distinction until 1950. Hinkle Fieldhouse is a legendary arena that still carries on the legend of Norman Dale and Jimmy Chitwood.

So far the Bulldogs have taken the same path as Hickory High. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if they can finish the deal.  I for one hope they do because college sports could use a real life Hoosiers story.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 11:27 am and is filed under College BB, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.