Recently, my wife, Roxanne, and I attended the Vincennes’s Rotary Club meeting where I gave a talk about my recent book, As if by Magic: The Story of Larry Bird’s Indiana High School Basketball Days. It’s always exciting to find a crowd in Indiana where discussions about the golden age of high school basketball, the era before class basketball and the three-point line, create a buzz of excitement. Vincennes, long a hotbed of intense high school basketball, was certainly a great place for these kinds of discussions.
After my talk, and after some great conversations, Gary Hackney, a former principal at Vincennes High School asked Roxanne and I if we would like to tour the renovated Adams Coliseum where so many great high school basketball games occurred over the decades. Originally called the Vincennes Coliseum, it was renamed the Adams Coliseum in 1961 to honor Coach John Adams. With a seating capacity of over 4,000, the sparkling gymnasium was dedicated on November 12, 1926. In the game that followed, Vincennes got past Mitchell, 39-38 before a full house. It would be the first of hundreds of basketball games played there.
Any older, empty Hoosier high school gymnasium, large or small, will enrapture you with a sense of the past, the weighty, overpowering sensation of ghosts, like traveling back in a time machine. Adams Coliseum was no exception to the rule. Vincennes had won the state championship three years before the coliseum was built and for that decade the school was one of the superpowers in this basketball-loving state. In 1925, the Vincennes team, rated first by most experts, played before the very creator of basketball, James Naismith, a visitor to the state tournament in Indianapolis that year. Vincennes lost in a semi-final game. It was during the tourney that Naismith proclaimed Indiana to be the high school basketball state.
Some of the hottest games over the years in Adams Coliseum occurred in the Vincennes sectional. Although Vincennes High School dominated, the carnival-like atmosphere, the treasured Hoosier hope for the underdog played out over a week’s time with great excitement each spring in the coliseum. In 1927, there were fifteen teams in the sectional, Freelandville, Vincennes Township, Bicknell, Emison, Vincennes, Fritchton, Monroe City, Westphalia, Oaktown, Wheatland, Edwardsport, Sandborn, Decker, Bruceville, and Decker Chapel.
“Chair seat season tickets were passed down through families and became items of feuding in divorces cases,” Gary Hackney explained when we first stepped into the gym. In our meanderings down into the dungeon like locker rooms, I asked Gary if he knew Larry Bird had once played in the coliseum in an extremely close game, a contest I researched and wrote about in my book, a battle that made the place all but rock. He did not, but few people did. Larry’s Springs Valley team never played Vincennes in the regular season or in tournament play.
What happened with Larry Bird, came about when Springs Valley was scheduled to play South Knox High School. The Spartan gym, however, would not hold all the fans who would be showing up to watch Larry perform in his amazing senior year. The problem was resolved by moving the game to Adams Coliseum.
South Knox was a tough Blue Chip Conference foe who had earned a 9-6 record. Valley was on a roll, having lost only three games, two of them early in the season. Larry was the leading scorer in the state when the Valley bus pulled into the nearby parking lot, having exploded to an amazing level of play. That the two teams were both in the hunt for second place in the conference only added to the tension.
The next day after the contest, the Springs Valley paper carried the sports headline “South Knox—Ugh.”Reporter Arnold Bledsoe wrote, “It was cold outside, it was cold in the Spartan goalry and the Hawks were ice cold. Valley’s 32 per cent was by far the poorest of the year. It’s bound to happen to any team, and Saturday it happened to Valley—the shooting percentage we mean. For the first time this season the Hawks were outrebounded, 31-22.”
South Knox, on the other hand, methodically carried out a inspired game plan, slowing down the contest by holding the ball and taking good shots. Larry scored only four points in the first quarter, and the Spartans led 9-6. The half ended 23-19 with Valley ahead, after a lucky Blackhawk player got a tip-in off an offensive rebound as the horn sounded, an official signaling it was good. The South Knox crowd broke out in an ear-shattering chorus of boos, the sound bouncing off the Adams Coliseum walls.
But the Spartan fans had much to be happy about as the teams went to their dressing rooms. South Knox’s Jim Wyant had been especially effective in the second period, hitting Bird-like corner shots with dead-eye accuracy, frustrating Valley fans, who were used to seeing Larry carry out such displays. The tension and excitement kept the crowd roiled, like a giant bubbling cauldron.
The third period ended at 35-31 with Valley ahead, although the Blackhawks had possessed a ten-point lead at one juncture. The final quarter was an Indiana high school basketball nail-biter with every fan standing and the noise so loud, players were unable to hear any instruction coming from the benches. It may have been freezing outside, but everyone was sweating inside the coliseum. In this quarter, Ed Vieck lit up the goal for South Knox. But Larry Bird was hot too.
Springs Valley, behind Larry’s shooting, kept the lead until 3:26 left in the game, when South Knox crept ahead by a point. One spectator recalled that because of the contest’s intensity, the riveting excitement of the large roaring crowd in the packed gymnasium, the last few minutes seemed to run in slow motion. Valley failed to score on a possession, and the Spartans held the ball, letting the clock wind down. Then they took a shot. “GOOOOD!” screamed the Vincennes radio announcer.
South Knox was up by three with just under two minutes left in the game.
Adams Coliseum rocked with noise, South Knox fans chanting “Upset! Upset!” But just when the lights seemed to go out for Springs Valley, things jelled for the Blackhawks. Valley got their hands on the ball, and John Carnes put back an offensive rebound, bringing Valley within one point. Playing hard-core defense, Valley got the ball back again and Bird hit a shot, giving the Blackhawks a one-point lead with seconds remaining.
Basketball games often turn on a single play, and Larry’s basket has been seen as the winning act. But Harry Moore at the Paoli Republican captured another angle, now forgotten, reporting that South Knox had the ball and a chance for a major upset when Valley’s Brad Bledsoe somehow managed to tie up a South Knox player and won the tip. With one second left, John Carnes cashed in on a foul shot, leaving the score 50-48 in favor of Springs Valley. The next day the Vincennes Sun-Commercial headlined “South Knox Loses Heartbreaker” and added in the subhead, “Bird Held to 19.” The report also offered insight into the pivotal part of the game. “With less than two minutes in the game remaining in the final period, the Spartans led 48-45, but the Blackhawks used a desperation defense and sharp rebounding to score five unanswered points and salvage victory.”
Ed Vieck and Jim Wyant were the “almost heroes” for South Knox, the team being just seconds away from becoming another Indiana high school basketball legend, almost able to say what few would, that they beat Larry Bird. And meanwhile, Adams Coliseum gained seeds for more ghosts.
As we walked back up from the locker rooms, I asked Gary what game he most remembered being played in the gym and he did not hesitate. “Damon Baily was a freshman when Bedford North Lawrence came to town.” I reminded him Sports Illustrated had named Bailey the best freshman player in the nation. Gary continued. “Well, when Damon came into the gym, he was surrounded by security people, and the crowd went nuts.”
North Lawrence came into the contest at 14-2 while Vincennes stood at 9-6. Well over 4,500 fans packed the house. The Vincennes paper noted, “For a game not involving two Knox County schools, this is one of the most anticipated regular-season games in recent memory. Bailey averages 21.4 points a game. But it is his all-around game— rebounding, passing, and defense which draws the most raves. He reportedly has a 42-inch vertical leap.”
The next day the paper reported how Bedford “bolted out of the starting gate and led by as many as 11 points in the opening quarter.” Bedford fans went especially wild when Damon hit a spinning baseline drive to give his team a 23-16 lead deep into the second quarter. Then, just like that, Vincennes’ Ralph Smith hit three straight jumpers and made it 25-23 at halftime. Then the game shifted again. As the third quarter came to an end, Bailey hit a twenty-footer as time ran out, bringing Bedford fans to their feet and giving his team a 39-33 lead. The baby-faced freshman was everything they said he was.
It was wild, it was crazy, the fourth quarter. Vincennes player Rusty Johnson scored eleven points, the last five coming at the end of the game, putting his team up by a single point with just over a minute to play. After his team missed a foul shot, Bedford grabbed the ball and went into a stall, hoping to get the ball to Bailey for the winning basket. Everyone was standing, many on tiptoes. Gary Hackney watched as Damon took “a fifteen-foot jumper from the baseline. Perfect form.”
But the shot missed, and a few seconds later the Vincennes fans came storming onto the floor like water surging from a busted dam. Gary turned to us. “The security people quickly surrounded Damon Bailey, hurrying him to the visitor’s dressing room. And you couldn’t see the floor for all the Vincennes fans.” For a while, Roxanne, Gary, and I looked quietly out on the empty Adams Coliseum floor, imagining other times, other set of ghosts. Then, it was time to go.
