FALL 2027

There’s a reason Indiana is known for basketball.

It's more than its legends like Oscar Robertson, Larry Bird, and John Wooden. More than its college and professional teams.

It lives in small towns on cold, dark winter nights. Crowds bundled tight, streaming into warm, bright, Indiana gyms. The squeak of sneakers on polished hardwood, the rhythm of bouncing leather, the roar of a town that showed up.

Here, the game didn't just grow. It seeped into the soil and soul, uniting Hoosier communities around their hometown team. The team and town were inseparable, one in their identity.

It's generations - young and old - cheering shoulder to shoulder. It's pep bands and popcorn, student sections and homemade signs. And an entire town rising and falling with the breathless bounce of a ball on an iron rim, its hopes resting on the shoulders of teenagers.

This is why 14 of the 16 largest high school gyms in the world are here, each holding more than 7,000.

Why James Naismith, inventor of the game, watching a state finals in 1925, marveled. "Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts," he said. "But it was made for Indiana."

This is where the phrases "March madness," "final four," and "sweet 16" were penned by Indiana sportswriters as early as the 1920s. Where teams began cutting down nets, starting a tradition now seen everywhere.

Where Butler Fieldhouse rose in 1928, with 15,000 seats, not for a college of just 1,700 students, but for the high school tournament that sold out for decades.

It's where Chuck Taylor learned the game.

Where the largest non-state sanctioned high school tournament in the world took place over a span of five decades. Bigger than anything before or since.

This is where tiny Milan captured the nation's imagination by winning for all the small schools who never got the chance to get there.

It's where Oscar Robertson didn't just learn how to play - he changed the game. 

Where an all-black team from a school the Ku Klux Klan created became the first Indianapolis team to win a state title. And in doing so, won over the heart of a city that had once overlooked them. 

This is the home of Larry and Oscar and Wooden, but also of Stoney, Piggy, Stretch, Fuzzy, Griz, Plump, Slick, Mount, McGinnis, Alford and Damon. And so many more who defined the game for the country and pushed it forward.

And it's home to the Wampus Cats, the Speedkings, the Brickies, and the Plowboys. The War Horses, the Apple Boys, the Beantowners and more.

It's where a beloved movie captured the heart and soul of Indiana small-town community life, and struck a chord with underdogs with heart everywhere.

And it's where more than 41,000 people packed the Hoosier Dome to watch teenagers play.

It's the state that clung fiercely to its single class tournament - one champion, from any size of school - long after the rest of the country had gone to multiple class champions. 

And it's where a 21,000-square-foot high school hall of fame stands as a shrine to it all. No other state has anything like it. 

This is Indiana. The State of The Game.