INDIANAPOLIS — You can’t get away from “Hoosiers” out here. If it’s not Hinkle Fieldhouse becoming Indianapolis’ leading tourist attraction, it’s Butler playing Hickory High to Duke’s South Bend Central in tonight’s NCAA championship game.
I keep thinking I’m going to look up and Brad Stevens’ choirboy face will be replaced by Gene Hackman’s weathered mug.
But it’s just not on the court(s) that you can catch remnants of the famous 1986 film about the greatest upset in Indiana prep history.
Remember Jimmy Chitwood, the Hickory High boy who made the last-second shot to beat South Bend Central? He was the fictional character representing Bobby Plump, whose buzzer-beater led tiny Milan High over powerhouse Muncie Central in the 1954 one-class Indiana title game. Oh, it was played at Hinkle.
Well, Plump now owns a bar in Indianapolis. Guess the title: Plump’s Last Shot.
The only more aptly named bar I’ve ever seen is the one on Colorado, near Rose Medical Center: The Recovery Room.
Plump, 72, never tires of talking about the right elbow jump shot that is more famous now than it was then. When Butler knocked off Michigan State in the semifinals Saturday, I had to make a pilgrimage to the bar the next day.
Plump’s Last Shot is in a two-story A-frame house that was packed with locals and Final Four fans lounging outside on a sunny Indiana spring afternoon. I asked Plump if Butler is somewhat channeling Milan here in this NCAA Tournament.
“No question about it,” he told me. “Muncie Central is blue blood in Indiana. They’d won four state titles, tied for the most ever. They’ve won four more since then. You can parallel the same thing what Butler is doing now.”
Inside Plump’s Last Shot brought me back to a time when I thumbed through my dad’s old Converse high school basketball guides. There’s a 1954 Milan team picture with Plump looking like the cleanest-cut kid in a school of 160 students.
There’s the blue-and-gold Milan letterman jacket and a picture of Hackman with his arm around him. There’s a newspaper clip with the end-of-the-world headline “MILAN WINS STATE NET TITLE.”
“The shot is famous now nationally and internationally,” Plump said. “But back then 90 percent of the adult population in Indiana watched or listened to that game.”
Milan (pronounced MY-lan), located 50 miles west of Cincinnati, and its then population of 1,150 became the place to be in Indiana the next day. An estimated 30,000 people from five states drove to Milan to greet the team.
For the record, the movie got it right. That’s exactly where Plump hit the shot and exactly his favorite spot on the floor. Camera crews coming to town ask him to shoot it again.
“I hadn’t shot in three years,” Plump said. “I shot for somebody about a month ago. I told the guy: ‘Now I’m not going to warm up. I’m afraid I’ll hit it and your camera’s not rolling.’ Well, it took a while, and I shot a warm-up, and I hit it.
“When the cameras were rolling, it took me five more before it went in.”
After Milan, Plump turned down the Big Ten to sign with Butler and held the game and career scoring records there until 1970. He held the career free-throw mark until Gordon Hayward broke it against Syracuse two weeks ago.
Plump signed with Phillips 66, playing the old Denver DC Truckers at the Denver Coliseum in the National Industrial Basketball League, then was a financial planner for 31 years.
Now his life has come full circle. Half a century after Milan shocked the state, his old Butler Bulldogs are a win over mighty Duke from shocking the country. Butler’s no Milan. The Bulldogs were ranked 11th in the preseason poll.
But talk about blue blood? Duke is blue blood.
“There are parallels, but I want to emphasize something,” Plump said. “What these athletes are going through is on such a much bigger scale. We were a bunch of high school kids having fun.”
That pressure makes tonight’s game even more interesting than two high school teams playing in a state in the Midwest.
“My reaction is like everybody else,” Plump said. “It’s just fantastic. . . . I don’t think anyone realistically put money on them being in the final game.”
But they’re here. And if they’re down one and the clock is ticking down, see if a Butler Bulldog finds himself at the right elbow.
