Profile: Milan High School and the 1954 Indiana State Championship

The underdog is one of the great motifs in sports. It’s the David versus Goliath story that inspires all of us. One of the most memorable underdog stories is that of the “Hoosiers,” the 1954 Milan High School State Champions. These young men were undersized and underrated, but they defeated the overwhelming odds in one of modern sport’s greatest Cinderella stories.

For decades Indiana has been considered the heartland of the hardwood.

John Wooden was born here, in the town of Hall, and won the state high school championship in 1927 before winning the NCAA championship with Purdue University in 1932, acquiring the nickname “The Indiana Rubber Man” for his relentless dives to the hardwood in hopes of wrestling away a loose ball. Indianapolis’s own Oscar Robertson won two state high school titles in 1955 and 1956, in spite of vicious racism from fans and opponents, and eventually became the only man to ever average double-figure points, rebounds, and assists in an NBA season. The great Larry Bird, “the Hick from French Lick,” is one of the all-time greatest players in collegiate and NBA history, first leading Indiana State to the 1979 NCAA championship game, and then captaining the Boston Celtics to three NBA championships in the 1980s. And Bob Knight, though not an Indianan by birth, coached the Indiana University Hoosiers to NCAA titles in 1976, 1981, and 1987.

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“Basketball,” said James Naismith, the inventor of the game, “was born in Massachusetts, but grew up in Indiana.”

Though now considered a predominantly urban game, basketball originally gained popularity in Indiana as a welcome diversion for farming communities, who sought entertainment after the sun went down on cold winter nights. Entire towns would crowd into tiny gyms to cheer on their local boys, and high schools developed fierce rivalries with one another, in spite of their diminutive sizes.

And no team played with more ferocity than the 1954 Milan High School Indians.

Boasting an enrollment of only 161 students, the prospect of the Indians capturing the state title that year looked unlikely. Their coach was a quiet twenty-six-year-old named Marvin Wood. Wood had replaced the previous coach, described by one player as “the most popular coach in Milan’s history,” two seasons prior, after he had been fired for ordering new uniforms without permission. Wood had promptly installed new offensive and defensive schemes and shut out practice to outsiders, turning many residents against him. Milan’s size was also an issue. The tallest of the ten boys on the team, five-foot-eleven-inch Gene White, was hardly an imposing figure.

But, as White would say nearly fifty years later, “I was raised to play whoever comes along.”*

In Milan, a tiny farming town tucked in the corner of the state, whoever came along was almost always familiar with one another. Assembling pickup games on gravel driveways and dirt lots, the Milan players had been competing with and against one another since childhood and had forged chemistry and basketball intelligence, which helped them overcome more athletically gifted opponents.

Milan had qualified for the state tournament the year before and made a strong showing, advancing all the way to the semifinals. Now in 1954, with the majority of the key contributors to the team returning and postseason experience under their belt, Milan seemed poised to do well. Typically, small towns like Milan could expect some degree of success in the state tournament, but almost always bowed out to powerhouse teams from larger cities like Indianapolis, Gary, and South Bend.

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But Milan wasn’t ready to settle.

Buoyed by Coach Wood’s stifling defensive schemes, the Indians finished the regular season 19–2, ripping off a ten-game winning streak as the championship tournament approached, in which 751 schools from across the state would vie for the title.

After steamrolling through the sectional and regional rounds of the tournament, Milan entered the semifinals in Indianapolis against the Montezuma High School Aztecs, an underdog in their own right, as Montezuma had half the enrollment of Milan’s 161. Nonetheless, Milan prevailed in a 44–34 triumph, then scurried back to their hotel to catch a nap before a night game against Crispus Attucks High School, whose star player, Oscar Robertson, went on to lead his team to two consecutive state championships in 1955 and 1956, and would later be voted one of the NBA’s fifty greatest players in 1996.

Bobby Plump, Milan’s star player, had worn himself out against Montezuma that afternoon and was struggling to get through the game versus Crispus Attucks. At halftime, Plump was wrapped up in a blanket, shivering in a cold sweat from exhaustion. His teammates told him they would hold down their slim 7-point lead, but Plump insisted on going back out and was already shooting warm-up jumpers as Coach Wood emerged out of the locker room for the second half. Plump’s iron will was partly forged by a hardscrabble childhood. He was the youngest of six children, whose mother had died when Bobby was five, and was raised by his father and oldest sister. The family never had any running water, and electricity came only when Bobby was twelve. But the Plumps were close-knit, and any material deficiencies were made up for by the close comforts of family and Bobby’s love for the game of basketball. No doubt inspired that day by Plump’s heroics, Milan topped Crispus Attucks 65–52, advancing to play Terre Haute Gerstmeyer Tech.*

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In the state semifinal, Milan bested Tech by the score of 60–48, and earned the right to play the powerful Muncie Central for the championship. Muncie’s gym alone could fit seven times the entire population of Milan.

It has been estimated that 90 percent of all Indiana families either watched or listened to the championship game that day*—a defensive contest that featured a poor shooting performance from Bobby Plump. Sensing that his traditional strategies would not work against the mighty Muncie front line, Coach Wood resorted to dilatory tactics—holding the ball stationary for four minutes of the fourth quarter—in order to keep the game close. With three seconds left on the clock and the score tied 30–30, Plump played the hero once again, draining a jump shot as time expired to give the Indians the title. The Indiana High School Athletic Association awarded Plump the Trester Award for the player exhibiting outstanding mental attitude, sportsmanship, and character.

While plenty of underdog teams have captured titles throughout the history of sports, none have captured the popular imagination quite like the 1954 Milan Indians. Forty thousand people descended on Milan (population: 1,150) the next day as the team returned home from Indianapolis. The 1986 movie Hoosiers retold the story, although it did feature many variations of the true story to fit film conventions. For instance, the movie character Jimmy Chitwood, based on Bobby Plump, was eager to take—and make—the final shot. “I was a very shy kid,” Bobby Plump told the Washington Post in 1995. “I never would have said, ‘I’ll make it.’” Nonetheless, Hoosiers helped to ingrain the Milan Indians in sporting legend forever.

All the players on the 1954 championship team went on to have fruitful careers in public and private life, with many becoming successful teachers and coaches in their own right, like starting forward Ron Truitt and reserve Glen Butte. The determination, team play, and underdog mentality that propelled them to victory in 1954 proved to be invaluable throughout their lives. In 2004, Bobby Plump told USA Today, “I think what 1954 did, not just for myself but for all the players and all the students and the town, is raise expectations a little bit. I think they assumed they could do things they assumed they couldn’t do before.”

* Greg Guffey, The Greatest Basketball Story Ever Told: The 1954 Milan Miracle, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, xi.

* Phillip M. Hoose, “Indiana’s Cinderella Basketball Team,” in Ralph Gray, Indiana History: A Book of Readings, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 408–410.

* Ibid.