Similarities

There were other connections between the movie and real life. The announcer of the championship game in the movie was Hilliard Gates, whose voice was familiar to Indiana high school basketball fans of the 1950s and 60s. The legendary announcer Tom Carnegie played the role of the public address announcer during the final championship game at Hinkle Fieldhouse. Ray Craft also has a role in the film, welcoming the Huskers to Butler Fieldhouse as they get off the bus for the championship game. The game winning shot for the championship is shot by Matt Melvin.

Behind the scenes

During filming on location at Hinkle Fieldhouse, directors were unable to secure enough extras for shooting the final scenes even after casting calls through the Indianapolis media. In order to help fill the stands, they invited two local high schools to move a regular season game to the Fieldhouse. Broad Ripple and Chatard high schools obliged, and crowd shots were filmed during the actual game. Fans of both schools came out in period costumes to serve as extras and to supplement the hundreds of locals who had answered the call. At halftime of and following the Broad Ripple-Chatard game, the actors took to the court and some footage was captured of the state championship scenes, including the game-winning shot by Hickory. (Note: Look closely at the short stands behind one of the Fieldhouse goals and you'll see a Chatard Letterman's Jacket bearing the year '86 worn by one of the student extras.)

The film's producers chose New Richmond, Indiana to serve as the fictional town of Hickory, and recorded most of the film's location shots in and around the community. Signs on the roads into New Richmond still recall its role in the film.

Based on a true story

The film is not really based on the story of the 1954 Indiana state champions, Milan High School (pronounced /ˈmaɪlən/ MY-lun), but the term "inspired by a true story" may be more appropriate as there is little in the movie that coincides at all with Milan's 1953–54 season other than that both were small schools that won the State Championship in the 1950s. The game winning shot in the movie was based on Bobby Plump's last second shot to win the 1954 Indiana State Basketball Championship. In most US states, high school athletic teams are divided into different classes, usually based on the number of enrolled students, with separate state championship tournaments held for each classification. At the time, Indiana conducted a single state basketball championship for all of its high schools, and continued to do so until 1997. Today, only Kentucky, Delaware, and Hawaii continue to use the one-class system to determine the state high school basketball champion. Some elements of the film do match closely with those of Milan's real story. Like the movie's Hickory High School, Milan was a very small high school in a rural, southern Indiana town. Both schools had undersized teams. Both Hickory and Milan won the state finals by two points: Hickory won 42–40, and Milan won 32–30. The final seconds of the Hoosiers state final hold fairly closely to the details of Milan's 1954 final; the final shot in the movie was taken from virtually the same spot on the floor as Bobby Plump's actual game-winner. The movie's final game was even shot in the same building that hosted the 1954 Indiana final, Butler University's Hinkle Fieldhouse (called Butler Fieldhouse in 1954) in Indianapolis.

Hoosiers Movie

Hoosiers is a 1986 sports film about a small-town Indiana high school basketball team that wins the state championship. The film is set during 1952, when all high schools in Indiana, regardless of school size, competed in one state championship tournament, and is very loosely based on the story of a real Indiana team of that period, the Milan High School team that won the 1954 state championship. It stars Gene Hackman as a new coach with a spotty past, Barbara Hershey, Sheb Wooley, and Dennis Hopper as the basketball-loving town drunkard, a performance that brought Hopper an Oscar nomination. The movie was written by Angelo Pizzo, who would go on to co-produce the underdog sports movie Rudy, and directed by David Anspaugh, who directed the latter film. The score was composed by Jerry Goldsmith, who was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Music, Original Score.

Hoosiers was ranked number 13 by the American Film Institute on its 100 Years... 100 Cheers. The film was the choice of the readers of USA Today newspaper as the best sports movie of all time. In 2001, Hoosiers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

In June 2008, AFI revealed its "Ten top Ten" — the best ten films in ten "classic" American film genres — after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Hoosiers was acknowledged as the fourth best film in the sports genre.

A museum to commemorate the real life achievements of the 1954 Milan team has been established.

Hoosiers was re-titled as Best Shot in the United Kingdom.