College basketball is heating up; have you made your bracket yet? There aren’t quite as many movies out there about basketball as there are about football, but the Libraries does have a few to keep you company for those times without basketball.
Hoosiers is a must-see for any basketball fan – it has the whole shebang: an underdog sports team, a coach seeking redemption, and a small town with little else to do besides pay too much attention to the high school basketball team. It’s loosely based on the 1954 Milan High School Indiana state championship team, so you get a small dose of history with this one as well.
If you want a little more of real-life stories set around the same time period, and just down the road from Milan High School, there’s Something to Cheer About: Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks Tigers. This documentary explores the Crispus Attucks High School Basketball team and their 1955 State Championship win – marking the first time in the U.S. that an all-black team won a state title.
Other documentaries feature the stories of the Harlem Globetrotters in The Team that Changed the World, LeBron James in More than a Game, the Roosevelt Roughriders in The Heart of the Game, and aspiring young players in Hoop Dreams.