Hoosier hysteria is the excitement surrounding basketball in the U.S. state of Indiana. This excitement generally revolves around the Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament, the Indiana Hoosiers men's basketball team of Indiana University (IU), the Purdue Boilermakers men's basketball team of Purdue University, the Butler Bulldogs men's basketball team of Butler University, the Indiana Pacers of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Indiana Fever of the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA). Indiana's passion for basketball was observed and written about by basketball's inventor, James Naismith. In 1925, Naismith visited an Indiana basketball state finals game along with 15,000 screaming fans. He later wrote that while it was invented in Massachusetts, "basketball really had its origin in Indiana, which remains the center of the sport". In the 1954 Indiana High School Boys Basketball Tournament, underdog Milan, with just an enrollment size of 161 students, defeated the heavily favored Muncie Central to win the state title. The 1986 David Anspaugh film Hoosiers, starring Gene Hackman, is loosely based on the 1954 tournament. Since the late 20th century, numerous basketball stars have generated excitement and fan generation in Indiana. One of these players, Larry Bird, became one of the most marketed and popular Indiana athletes in history due to his play for the Indiana State Sycamores from 1976 to 1979, and for his head coaching tenure for the Indiana Pacers from 1997 to 2000. Players such as Reggie Miller and Jalen Rose became popular during Bird's tenure as head coach of the Pacers. In the 21st century, athletes such as Caitlin Clark, Paul George and Tyrese Haliburton have generated similar excitement to a lesser degree. The Caitlin Clark effect has particularly generated excitement around the Indiana Fever of the WNBA.
High school basketball Through the 2009-2010 NBA season, 152 Hoosier athletes have played professional basketball in the world's top league. Considering the size of the state (population 6.4 million), this makes Indiana high schools by far the most successful at developing NBA players per capita. Today there are 22 Hoosiers in the NBA - more than one for every 150,000 male residents. In 2017, Indiana natives won the NBA and D-league Slam Dunk Contests, NBA and D-league 3-point contests, and won runner-up in the NBA Skills Challenge. Historically, each of the several hundred small towns of Indiana had its own small school system. Before consolidation of many of these rural school districts in the last half of the twentieth century, Indiana high schools had fewer students than those of most other states; basketball was a natural game for these schools since it only required five starters and a few reserves and even a few great players could make a strong team. The Franklin Wonder Five, led by Fuzzy Vandivier, was the first team to win the state championship in three consecutive years, from 1920 to 1922. This accomplishment would not be matched for over six decades. After Milan's Miracle in the 1950s, no school with an enrollment of less than 500 won another boys' State title under the all-comers format. As school consolidation became more common and as more rural residents migrated to cities making large high schools grow even larger, smaller high schools had only a mismatch to look forward to come tournament time, as success concentrated in Indiana's large urban and suburban schools. Starting with the 1997–1998 season, Indiana established a controversial four-class system for its basketball championship, although many other sports remain single-class. The state's move to this new system has, to some extent, diminished the phenomenon and public opinion is widely split on the merits of "class basketball." Aside from the "Milan Miracle," the story of Crispus Attucks High School ranks as one of the greatest in Indiana high school basketball tradition. In 1955, the year after Attucks had lost in the semistate final (state quarterfinals) to Milan's championship team, Attucks gained fame by winning the Indiana state championship, becoming the first all-black school in the nation to win a state title open to all schools regardless of race. Crispus Attucks repeated as champions in 1956, becoming the first Indiana high school team to complete a season undefeated. The Attucks teams of 1954 through 1956 were led by Oscar Robertson. Milan and Crispus Attucks are memorialized for their accomplishments and tradition at the Indiana State Museum as well as at the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in New Castle. A highlight of the single-class tournament was the 1990 State Championship game, in which the paid attendance was over 40,000 fans. This turnout of fans who witnessed Damon Bailey's Bedford-North Lawrence Stars win the State Championship stands as the largest crowd ever to witness a high school basketball game. After the 1997 season (when Bloomington North won the final single-class State Championship), the IHSAA controversially did away with the single-class system, ending the run of single-class champions in Indiana. Some argue Hoosier Hysteria was diminished as a result. In 2003, DeKalb High School (1200 students) nearly defeated Pike High School (3000 students). The Indiana tournament is still the most attended in the nation, with final four games for the two larger divisions regularly selling out Gainbridge Fieldhouse (formerly Conseco Fieldhouse and Bankers Life Fieldhouse).
High school gymnasiums
Indiana also possesses a disproportionate share of the country's largest high school basketball gymnasiums, including nine of the ten largest high school gyms in the country and eighteen of the top twenty. Seventeen venues in Indiana today have a capacity of over 6,000, the largest being the New Castle Fieldhouse, seating 9,325.
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