The Holy of Hoosiers

WHEN people think about the heartland of American basketball, they tend to conjure up the meanest streets of inner cities. Many of the sport's best players do indeed come from a world of rusty backboards screwed into brick walls. But a substantial minority comes from the polar opposite: the rural backroads of the state of Indiana. In this world, celebrated in the movie “Hoosiers”, white farmboys play every day, in any weather, for the whole of their lives. Indiana is basketball, root and soul—and now it is angry.