He waited up all night. but forward Sylvester Coalman scored 15 points to lead South Bend Instead of the Milan High Indians winning it all in 1954 against Muncie Central, it's the fictional Hickory Huskers beating mighty South Bend Central in 1952. Attucks. "If you weren't on the team, you were alone. Phil Raisor (Muncie Central sophomore in 1954): It's amazing how perception has played into the development of the story. Indianapolis Tech at Butler Fieldhouse. Five or six, maybe seven. championship team -- Shelbyville in 1947 -- then coach a state When the Bearcats held a 40th anniversary celebration of the game, one year early because former coach Jay McCreary was ill, players from both teams participated. That moment left its own kind of mark for Central and, in some ways, the town. Cook, Xaviya ( Jr.) Cole, Demarkis ( Jr.) Ullom, Josiah ( Sr.) Not the memories, though, and not the ties that still bind. Rolf went on to lead the Indiana All-Stars in scoring in each of the two games in the annual series against Kentucky that year, scoring 34 points in the second game in Louisville. He was there when Plump's Milan, a small country school, waltzed into the big city March 20, 1954, and beat Agullana's team, basketball powerhouse Muncie Central, in the Indiana high school state . Wells averaged 22.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.6 steals and 3.3 assists per game as a senior to earn third-team All-American honors on a Ball State team that won the Mid-American Conference regular-season title. He averaged 6.7 points and 5.2 rebounds for his NBA career. In the semifinals, both favorites were knocked off. Gary Froebel suffered a 50-49 defeat at the hands of Lafayette Beck and Plump also teamed up to campaign against multi-class basketball in the late 1990s; the 1997 tournament was the last of the single-class format. Morry Mannies was only in high school when the game happened, but two years later he came to Muncie for college and started broadcasting Ball State and Bearcats games for WLBC. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. The tension was there, but asfar as up and down the floor, wedidnt have to run nearly as muchas we were used to, said Birge. Functional cookies help to perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms, collect feedbacks, and other third-party features. "It was the greatest thing in the world," Marty Echelbarger says. final four games of the tournament tied the record of Crispus Thirty-three years later, the film Hoosiers, a fictionalized account based on Milan's 195254 seasons, opened to positive reviews, renewing interest in the team and its legacy. With an enrollment of only 161, Milan was the smallest school ever to win a single-class state basketball title in Indiana, beating the team from the much larger Muncie Central High School in a classic competition known as the Milan Miracle. You had to be alert, but then you got to thinking,Did he dribble or didnt he? said Birge. Lafayette Jefferson 61-56. Lafayette Jefferson sneaked past New Albany 41-39 in the other Your California Privacy Rights/Privacy Policy. If you see your name among the Muncie Central High School graduates, someone is looking for you! added 10 to lead the Bears (25-5) and first-year coach Elmer McCall Madison in 1949, to lift the Tigers to their second consecutive You can cancel at any time. And it makes me wonder how we beat you in the first place.. Everything we send is officiating specific because that's all we do. As it happened, Muncie found itself on an island. After Beck took Plump to Central's memorabilia room and showed him an authentic jacket from Hoosiers and the autographed ball from Plump he joined the Central alumni association and continues to pay his $10 annual dues. win against Crispus Attucks, which was paced by standout forward 1954 IHSAA State Championship Milan vs Muncie Central (3-26-18) - In 1954 tiny Milan pulled off one of the all-time great basketball feats winning the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Championship. Thompson is now the Bearcats' head coach, and in a unique position to appreciate the city's basketball history. On the playgrounds, he and his friends imitated the players they watched perform in the fieldhouse, both home and visitors. Both teams scored oncemore to knot the score at 30-30. He signed with Cincinnati out of high school and averaged 9.8 points and 5.2 rebounds over three seasons. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. forward Tom Schafer had 12 to lead South Bend Central to a 56-37 Sullivan scored a game-high 21 points for the Bearcats. Fieldhouse. Kokomo standout guard Jimmy Rayl had a record 114 points during Including the team that lost to Milan in 1954, Muncie has had seven runner-up teams in the state tournament, including Delta in the final year of the single-class tournament in 1997. Basketball fans will always remember Milan and Hickory, but Muncie Central will always be the team that lost to Milan. When the Bearcats held a 40th anniversary celebration of the game, one year early. In later years you might be able to get in with a single-game ticket, but you probably had to show up before the junior varsity game to get a decent seat. Leon Agullana started that game and played the majority of it, and as he looked back on those sixty years that seem to have gone by so fast for him, he wanted to make one point about it. Copyright 2022 Referee Enterprises Inc. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. just the second team in history to win a state title with an 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, Bloomington, Lafayette, Fort Wayne, Anderson and Indianapolis. I was under the basket when the ball came through. Attitude. They didnt even have time to throw it in. The team finished its regular season 192 and sported a 282 overall record. The Indiana 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. Geographic Location: Muncie . in the past. The tournament has often featured future NCAA and National Basketball Association (NBA) players. I was six years old and sitting on the Muncie bench with my dad. Mock scored 20 points and forward Tom Harrold added 17 points to Moore also won the Trester Award. The 6-9 Davis also graduated as Colorados all-time leading rebounder with 863. All rights reserved. Attucks star Oscar Robertson, who established the mark the previous Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. to a 42-41 victory over Terre Haute Gerstmeyer in the state title first appearance in the state championship game since 1916. Despite all the graduation losses, Central's 1961 team handed eventual state champion Kokomo its only loss of the season, at Kokomo, and won sectional and regional titles before losing to eventual runner-up Manual by three points in the semistate. Following the 1954 championship game, veteran referees Cyril Cy Birgeand Marvin Todd had no idea how significant the last-second upset they hadjust officiated was or would become to Indiana basketball and the state. McCallum was a role player as a junior, but took advantage of his chance as a senior to average 12.3 points and 2.6 assists per game and shooting 59 percent from the floor on a 24-5 team. 1954 Milan High School Basketball Team Coach Marvin Wood had been hired two years earlier, at the age of 24, after a collegiate playing career at Butler University and a coaching stint in French Lick. For his career, he averaged 9.5 points and 4.8 assists. 171 points set new records for scoring in a title game. selection Robertson scored 95 points during that same stretch. In the original footage, Shanahan said Gates' call "was almost indiscernible at times." Ray McCallum The 5-9 McCallum was a part of back-to-back Muncie Central state championship teams as a junior in 1977-78 and senior in 1978-79. to the title game on the line. 1954 muncie central basketball team roster; moonlight tales vs growl; louisiana civil war trail; facebook messenger . Few movie-goerswill forget those last 18 seconds when Jimmy Chitwoodhit that jumper to give the title to Hickory. Whitsell led Evansville Reitz with 14 points. Delta, on the outskirts of the city, won the 3A title in 2002. Birge officiatedbasketball 34 years as a highschool referee and worked as acollege official from 1941 to1970, including nine years in theBig 10. Subscribe to get the Referee.com Review every week plus periodic free training and special offers on the sports you officiate. Oscar Robertson scored 39 points, breaking the previous record It won state titles in 1951 and 1952 and entered the 1953-54 season with the billing of tallest team in Indiana history," a favorite to win it all. Fieldhouse. championship game of the Lafayette Semifinal. Charley Mazurek, Hartford Bulkeley. school to advance to the Final Four in consecutive seasons since MUNCIE Some 66 years later, the 1954 state championship game between Milan and Muncie Central remains one of the most enthralling games in Indiana basketball history. Semistate the following season. (25-5) in the title game. Jones was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2001. Its been 50 years since those two veteran referees patrolled the biggestupset in Indiana history. They boarded a bus outside Hinkle and made the 55-mile trek home in near silence. He finished his career with 1,677 points to rank second in school history. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. Email him at askmontieth@gmail.com and you could be featured in his next mailbag. What young boy wouldn't want to be part of such madness? basketball coach at Purdue University the following September. Bonham, meanwhile, recalled walking to the locker room at halftime of Cincinnati's game with Loyola and hearing someone shout, "Hey, Ron, Muncie Central just won the state championship!". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". For the Milan-Muncie championship match-up, HoosierHysteria was at an all-time high as 14,000-plus fans packed into ButlerFieldhouse, and tickets were being scalped for up to $50. Film from that gamehas beenrestored by IHSAA Champions Network. Forward Pat Klein led the Giants with a game-high 22 Call them Goliath, call them a team from South Bend in the film Hoosiers, or call them what they were: the Muncie Central Bearcats, immortalized in arguably the greatest sports story to come out of Indiana. And while Central was a big school with roughly 1,500 students, it wasn't even the biggest in its conference. Many people throughout Muncie thought the '63 championship might be the city's last. The 1954 Milan Museum also contains a Central section, and even the reunions have taken on "Hoosiers" themes. Echelbarger, in fifth or sixth grade at the time, got in line about 7 p.m. the night before to get in line. '"Agullana said, describing his first meeting with Plump years later. Four of them were voted Mr. Basketball and many more than that earned all-state honors. So, really, I was just throwing it. When he made the JV team, he thought he had arrived. These were realized as the Indians won their first regional game in school history under questionable circumstances against Morton Memorial, an orphanage school outside of Knightstown. When Celina Had Just One Team. Coach Art The wraps came off for the championship celebration, though. game since 1913, South Bend Central survived a last-second shot to Even in the Eighties, he and his father had to do what fathers and sons had been doing for decades: get to the game before the Bearkittens junior varsity team took the court so they could be sure of having a seat for the varsity game. Moore went on to become a star at Nebraska, where he was a three-year starter. Forward Stanford Patton added 19 points for Crispus I walked past her and I just stood there in front of him. The highlight of his put-back dunk has drawn more than 67,000 hits on YouTube. 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