TERRE HAUTE, IND. (AP) - Jake Kelly sees the reminders of Indiana State’s basketball past all around campus.
At the team office there are framed posters and photos representing the school’s best players and teams. On the wall of the practice facility are a handful of familiar quotes. Photos of the school’s most famous alumni, Larry Bird, still hang proudly in classroom buildings, and old-timers constantly remind the youngsters about the little team that could from 1979.
Every time the Sycamores make the NCAA tourney, the discussion starts again.
“We look up to what he (Bird) did,” said Kelly, the senior guard who transferred from Iowa after his mother died. “He averaged 30 (points) and 15 (rebounds), and he put Terre Haute and Indiana State in the headlines.”
Actually, the numbers were 28.6 and 14.9.
But the fact one of today’s college players can recite Bird’s 1979 stats from memory illustrates just how long Larry Legend’s shadow looms at a school less than 10 miles from the Indiana-Illinois line. How much the 1979 title game against Michigan State still matters.
The Sycamores practice in ISU Arena, which was the team’s home court in Bird’s days. Underneath the practice floor lies the wood Bird played on. Heck, even the Sycamores’ Missouri Valley Conference tourney title came on the first anniversary, March 6, of the debut of HBO’s documentary about Bird and Magic Johnson, the Spartans’ star who went on to battle Bird in the NBA.
Those in the Indiana State program don’t seem to mind.
From first-year coach Greg Lansing to senior guard Aaron Carter, the refrain is essentially the same. They embrace what the ’79 title game, still the highest-rated in television history, and Bird represent.
“Being at a school where one of the best players to ever play and who led a mid-major to a championship game, I love it,” Lansing said. “It’s just special.”
Carving their own names into the school record books would take another team of superheroes.
It just so happens that was this season’s theme. The cartoon characters on Indiana State’s team poster have Kelly suited up as The Flash, Carter as Ironman and Jake Odum, the homegrown freshman, as Spider-Man.
Together, these three led Indiana State (20-13) back to the NCAA tourney for the first time in a decade and only the fourth time in school history. The Sycamores will face third-seeded Syracuse, the same school Butler eliminated on its way to last year’s title game, on Friday in Cleveland.
One win would put them in a class with only two other teams in school history _ Bird’s 1979 team and the 2001 team led by Michael Menser, Lansing’s brother-in-law and the coach at Terre Haute North High School.
Two wins and the 2010-11 Sycamores would go down as the second-best in school history, and they certainly have their supporters. At least three players from the ’79 team _ Alex Gilbert, Bob Heaton and Brad Miley _ traveled to St. Louis for the MVC title game. That’s not all.
“It’s an exciting time,” Bird said last week. “I’m sure all their friends will be calling and there will be a lot more excitement around campus. They did what they had to do. The next step’s a bigger step for them. We’re all proud of them, no matter what happens.”
It’s never been easy.
Bird, a native of French Lick, Ind., acknowledges Indiana State doesn’t have the money for a national recruiting base. Nine of the 14 players on the current roster are from Indiana or Illinois.
There were other obstacles, too.
Kelly started at Iowa, then transferred after his mother died so he could be closer to his family in Indiana. Then last season, he tore ACL in his left knee.
Carter was recruited by former coach Royce Waltman and has played for two coaches since coming to Terre Haute. Coach Kevin McKenna resigned in June after three seasons to become an assistant on Dana Altman’s staff at Oregon. Lansing was promoted the next day.
“I did not see that coming. I thought if anything, he’d take (Altman’s job) at Creighton, but when they filled that, I thought he was going to be here,” Carter said. “He explained it was the best move for his family. But I think we really rallied together after that, and it made us a better team.”
The discussion over the years hasn’t changed, though.
As soon as Indiana State looks like it might be good enough to make the tourney, Bird’s name starts popping up.
It happened in 2000 and 2001 when Menser and Waltman helped Indiana State make back-to-back NCAA appearances, their first since 1979.
“I never took that as dismissing our team, it’s really just an indication of how great that (run) was,” Waltman said. “Anytime you play in the game that changed the game, that’s something nobody’s going to forget.”
Certainly not here.
In a state where basketball is king, every school seemingly has a story. Evansville, in the southwest corner of the state, is the alma mater of longtime Jazz coach Jerry Sloan. Division III Earlham College, on the Ohio border, is where former Lakers coach Del Harris got his start.
The countless stories tales include everyone from Purdue’s Rick Mount to Indiana’s Isiah Thomas, Notre Dame’s Austin Carr to Valparaiso’s Bryce Drew, IUPUI’s George Hill to Butler’s Gordon Hayward.
At Indiana State, it’s all Bird all the time.
There’s a poster showing each of Bird’s uniforms _ Spring Valley High School, Indiana State, the Boston Celtics, the U.S. Dream Team and a tie representing his current executive’s job with the Pacers.
“You walk around anywhere on this campus, even classrooms, and you see a picture of him,” Kelly said.
All these guys can do is try to give fans a picture of the new Indiana State.
Yes, they understand the fascination with Bird more than three decades later, and they have learned to live with it. They just want to leave their own image on campus.
“It’s a huge shadow and it won’t ever go away,” Carter said. “Everywhere you go on the road, people look at us and say, ’That’s where Larry Bird played.’ You have to embrace it. Hey, we’re not Larry Bird but it has been fun.”
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