Earlier this week, the Indianapolis 500 was postponed to August, making this the first year since 1946 the Greatest Spectacle in Racing won’t be held on Memorial Day weekend.
With apologies to the Brickyard, the state’s biggest sporting event was benched last Friday when the IHSAA canceled its boys’ basketball tournaments.
For the first time since 1910, Hoosier Hysteria takes a hiatus.
I had the opportunity to cover Indiana high school basketball as the state transitioned from the single-class format, where all 382 schools made the tournament and one emerged at the end of March as the state champion, to the current four-class system.
I worked for WLBC/WXFN radio in Muncie, a city 40 miles northeast of Indianapolis. At the time, we covered nine schools in Delaware County, with an emphasis towards eight time state champ (most in the single-class era) Muncie Central and perpetual kid brother, Muncie Southside (opened in 1962, won the 3A title in 2001, closed in 2014).
Additionally, you had small county schools with names like Wapahani, and suburban schools named Delta competing for ink and airtime with every tipoff.
Gyms seating 6,600 and coach’s shows broadcasting from local supermarkets. You could spin your radio dial on a Friday night and get games from all over East Central Indiana before Bob Lovell’s “Indiana Sportstalk” (which mostly dealt with high school hoops) on Network Indiana took you to midnight.
Working at WLBC/WXFN meant one sat courtside with Morry Mannies, longtime voice of Ball State athletics (for 56 years). He started calling games as a college freshman when the high school games were the entree and Ball State was the side dish.
Over the years, those properties changed from a revenue standpoint, but Morry remained the voice you heard whether it was Central, Southside, Delta or Yorktown making a deep tournament run.
He was a consummate professional who never lost his passion for the game or broadcast wane. Morry passed away earlier this month at the age of 81. I was fortunate to have worked with him.
We were fortunate to have a local school compete for the State (and then Class) Championship in three of my four years, and each journey to the RCA Dome in Indianapolis was filled with great moments.
At the same time, the station also carried Ball State men’s basketball during an era when the Cardinals were perennially contending for MAC titles and NCAA Tournament berths.
The Mid-American Conference of the late 90’s made its mark in March, with Western Michigan upsetting Clemson in the 1998 First Round and Miami (Ohio) powered by Wally Szczerbiak making the Sweet Sixteen in 1999.
Coaching the Cardinals was the school’s all-time leading scorer Ray McCallum, who had been a part of two state championships at Muncie Central.
For whatever reason, he couldn’t win enough during his tenure as coach (average record 19-11 over seven seasons) for a lot of fans who had gotten used to NCAA berths and still recalled almost beating eventual champ UNLV in the 1990 Sweet Sixteen.
The Cardinals did win the MAC Tournament in 2000, and McCallum left to coach at the University of Houston one month later. Ball State hasn’t been back to the NCAA Tournament since.
It was during that time Indiana was in its final days under coach Bob Knight; the Hoosiers failed to get out of the first weekend in his final six years in Bloomington. Purdue could get to the Sweet Sixteen, but coach Gene Keady’s Boilermakers came up painfully short of the Final Four.
We watched them lose to Wisconsin in the Regional Finals on the day of the State Championships in 2000. Butler was not “Butler,” two conference moves away from the Big East and a full decade away from their own Final Four runs, but still a scrappy team you dreaded playing.
The Final Four came to Indianapolis in 1997; I covered the First Round two years later as Doug Gottlieb led Oklahoma State past the school that wouldn’t recruit him (Syracuse) in the First Round. Following my alma mater in the Tournament was a challenge: pre-Turner you were stuck with what CBS sent to your area.
The night SU played Michigan State in the 2000 Sweet Sixteen, we were fed Purdue-Gonzaga. So I had to watch the crawl at the bottom of the screen as the Orange were held scoreless for the final five minutes of a 75-58 loss.
The previous week I was in Minneapolis to cover Ball State’s First Round game with UCLA. I admired Bruins coach Steve Lavin’s hair.
I complimented Verne Lundquist on his Super Bowl XIII call “Jackie Smith’s gotta be the sickest man in America,” only I called the Cowboys tight end “Jackie Sherrill.” Verne didn’t call me out.
Our broadcast location was next to the Maryland announcing crew, who beat Iona 74-59 in the game right before ours. Little did I know then I’d get to know Brett Bessell, Thom Marchitto and the voice of the Terps Johnny Holliday in the ensuing years.
