Tales from the Indiana High School Basketball Locker Room

Book excerpt: It’s often said that while Dr. James Naismith invented basketball in Massachusetts, the sport was raised and ultimately came of age in the high schools of Indiana, the state where politics, religion, and sweet corn fall in line behind the game played with the round orange ball. Tales from the Indiana High School Basketball Locker Room John Wooden, Bobby Plump, Steve Alford, Damon Bailey, Gary Harris, Caleb Swanigan, Yogi Ferrell—it’s as easy for an Indiana high school basketball fan to roll the names off the tongue as it is to find the broadcast of a high school game on AM radio on any Friday night during an Indiana winter. Tales from the Indiana High School Basketball Locker Room is not so much about statistics and winning streaks as it is about the personalities and emotions of those who created a phenomenon that became a way of life in the Hoosier State.