Sunday, September 26, 2010

94. Hoosiers (1986)

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Let's win this game for all the small schools that never had a chance to get here.

I grew up wanting to play basketball. It sounds stupid now, but I really didn't have anybody telling me I couldn't do it. Some of my greatest memories from the early '90s involve buzzer beaters from the likes of Michael Jordan and Christian Laettner. One of the things that always appealed to me about basketball was its nearly universal access. Either you had a basketball goal growing up or you lived close to a court. I never owned a pair of shoulder pads, playing a baseball game was always such a chore, soccer was way too much running, but I was in the backyard emulating the '92 Duke Blue Devils nearly every afternoon. In this movie Gene Hackman's Coach Norman Dale echoes this sentiment as his team makes their arrival at the coliseum which will host the state championship. He instructs one of the players to put the shortest player on his shoulders. He then hands them a measuring tape and asks the height of the goal. "10 feet", the players respond. The coach then replies: "Just like home". Bottom line, one of the greatest underdog sports movies of all time.

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