Basketball wasn't invented here. But 100 years ago in Indiana, it was a revelation to James Naismith

[Muda69]

https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/high-school/2025/03/20/100-years-ago-cow-barn-indiana-high-school-basketball-james-naismith-ihsaa-state-finals-1925/82555161007/

Quote

INDIANAPOLIS — It was barely past 6 a.m. on March 20, 1925. Lewis Fletcher Scott, the freshman class president at Anderson High School, wore a red and green sweater as he leaned against the west middle door of the Exposition building at the Indiana State Fairgrounds.

When the doors opened nearly an hour later, Scott walked into the sprawling, new Exposition building as the first fan to arrive for the 1925 high school boys basketball tournament. He was quickly followed by classmate Edward Bingham. What Scott and Bingham saw that Friday in the hours that followed must have felt like a dream for basketball fans like Harry Colburn of Tech, Helen Zerfas of Kirkland, Earl Johnson of Carmel and James Miller of Brookside.

Thousands of fans trailed Scott and Bingham through the Exposition building doors on Friday — and again on Saturday — traveling by train, streetcar, personal automobile or by foot. It is impossible to know what those fans felt exactly 100 years ago this weekend as they approached the fairgrounds’ building, but no doubt some mixture of anticipation and wonder.

If you wanted to trace the origins of Hoosier Hysteria, you could go back further — to the days of the first state champions from Crawfordsville in 1911, the first high school superstar, Homer Stonebraker of tiny state champion Wingate in 1913 and ’14, or the Franklin “Wonder Five” of three consecutive state titles from 1920-22.

But if you wanted to pinpoint a weekend when Indiana high school basketball became Indiana high school basketball, you could put yourself in Scott’s and Bingham’s shoes around sunrise on March 20, 1925, and imagine what they saw. None other than the inventor of basketball, Dr. James Naismith, was among those who watched the state finals that weekend at the request of Indiana High School Athletic Association commissioner Arthur Trester.

“The possibilities of basketball as seen here,” Naismith would later write of his experience, “were a revelation to me. Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.”

...

Another wonderful article by Mr. Nedderiep.  And only fitting that the only Indiana state basketball tournament finals attended by the inventor of the game was won by Frankfort.