“Hoosiers” is the quintessential underdog sports story. The 1986 movie is based loosely on the story of the 1954 Milan High School basketball team that won the Indiana state championship. The Hickory Hoosiers have an enrollment of just 64, leading to an undersized basketball team that has only six boys on it.

The movie stars Gene Hackman as the controversial coach, Norman Dale, and Dennis Hopper as Shooter, an embarrassing drunk who later serves as an assistant coach for the Hickory Huckers.

Dale finds himself battling the entire town to stay employed, rubbing the citizens and some of the players the wrong way. He eventually gains help from the state’s best player, Jimmy Chitwood, who decides to come back to playing basketball.

Dale leads his ragtag group of kids on a run after Chitwood joins the team and eventually make it to the state championship as the smallest school to make it there in Indiana history.

The reason this movie works so well and is considered one of the best sports movies of all time is because it laid the foundation for underdog sports movies.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 17th, 2011 at 11:17 am and is filed under Uncategorized.  Tagged Basketball, Dennis Hopper, Gene Hackman, Hoosiers, Indiana 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.