MILAN INDIANA 1954 STATE CHAMPIONS Milan, Indiana

Date: 1954 Source Type: Postcard Publisher, Printer, Photographer: Groganphoto Postmark: None Collection: Steven R. Shook Remark: Milan High School won the 1954 Indiana State Basketball Championship against Muncie Central High School, a school ten times its size. The 1986 movie Hoosiers is loosely based on the story of this team.

Unlike most states, Indiana held a single-class tournament where all schools competed for the same championship in one of America's largest and most popular high school tournaments until the controversial 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 as South Bend, Evansville, Gary, Terre Haute, Muncie, and Indianapolis.

Coach Marvin Wood was hired two years previously, at the age of 24, after a collegiate playing career at Butler University and a coaching stint in French Lick. His hiring was controversial, coming on the heels of Superintendent Willard Green's firing of coach Snort Grinstead, who ordered new uniforms without authorization. Wood 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."

Expectations were higher in the 1952–1953 season. These were realized as the Indians won its first regional game in school history, but the Indians went on to shock the state by winning the 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 of South 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.