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Bobby Plump dribblng down the fnal 18 seconds of clock to swish the shot that beat mighty Muncie Central. Te Milan Miracle, of course, is the basis of the movie Hoosiers. Over the years, some players have become as much mystery as legend — like Mike Redd of Louisville Seneca. I never saw Redd, but Lloyd Gardner has seen everybody. Gardner coached Fairdale High to two Kentucky championships. He trained the ABA's Kentucky Colonels and wrote a book about it (Te Real Story of a Team Left Behind), and, for the past 33 years, he has hosted the King of the Bluegrass basketball tournament at Fairdale. But even a guy who's seen 'em all has to pause to consider Redd. "Maybe one of the top fve guards of all time," Gardner says. had all those terrifc teams coached by Mr. S.T. Roach. "Tose were great years for the tournament. Ashland had Larry Conley. Saint X had Mike Silliman. Ten later it was Clem Haskins and Dwight Smith, Mike Casey, Butch Beard. Flaget won it in Freedom Hall." But that Seneca-Dunbar showdown was the most electric moment of the era, says Gardner. "Just an unbelievable atmosphere." Who won? Oh, you could look that up (Seneca, 7266). A mere fact. Te important thing is the magic. Tese days, Gardner adds, the state tournament attracts mostly an adult crowd. "It was something to see kids from all over "Redd just had so much charisma on the basketball foor. It reminds me of the way we used to watch Dr. J, even talk about him in the locker room." — Lloyd Gardner Redd won a state championship teaming with Westley Unseld and some other excellent players at Seneca. He was supposed to go to Western Kentucky but ended up at Kentucky Wesleyan, and did win a small college championship. "But then," Gardner says, "he just kind of went away and is kind of forgotten." But not completely. "Mike was a 6-2 guard, and there wasn't anything he couldn't do," Gardner says. "And he was so fuid that you didn't see what he was doing until he'd already done it. Redd just had so much charisma on the basketball foor. It reminds me of the way we used to watch Dr. J, even talk about him in the locker room." And Unseld? Every U of L fan knows of Big Wes. Unseld is so much a part of the Cardinals' history. But he was just as big in Kentucky high school basketball, maybe bigger. Playing with Redd, then without him, Seneca won back-to-back 7th Region and state championships, and Unseld remains the dominant big man of Kentucky high school tournament history. "When it comes to great moments," Gardner says, "I think I go back to the Lexington Dunbar-Seneca fnal of the Sweet 16; I guess it was 1963 in Freedom Hall. You could NOT get a ticket to that game. Unseld and Redd for Seneca, coached by Bob Mulcahy, and Dunbar, that 30 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 2.14 the state with their letter jackets, but you almost never see letter jackets anymore," he says. "When I started going, the Sweet 16 was played at Memorial Coliseum at UK. I mean, four of us got in a car and went to Lexington. You could stay in a dorm room right on campus for something like $12 for four nights. Kids would congregate from diferent schools. You'd meet your new girlfriend for three days. And then she would go home to her boyfriend, and you'd never hear from her again." G rowing up in Corydon, Ind., we didn't have any really legendary players. But come tournament time, all the stores downtown would have their big glass windows painted with black and gold messages and pictures of Panthers sinking shots, all wishing Corydon well in the sectional — even though New Albany always won it. Ten one year, Corydon beat New Albany in the sectional at New Albany's old gym. On that famous Saturday night, there was a huge parade of cars winding up the Knobs and back to Corydon on Indiana 62. Tey hauled out both fre trucks for a parade and went honking all around the Old Capitol Square. Te celebration moved to the Harrison County Fairgrounds, where, next door, Bill Gary had a junkyard with a huge stack of old tires. Tose got thrown onto a bonfre. Te fre got bigger and bigger, then smokier and smokier, with thick black smoke lying all over the town — and it was still hanging in the air and depositing black flm on every car the next morning. But nobody cared. Te Corydon Panthers beat New Albany to win the sectional! In Indiana and Kentucky, high school basketball is usually ruled at the top by the same big schools from the same big towns and cities — ancient powers. But then a little school will go a long way — or all the way. Kentucky has had champions from places like Corinth and Carr Creek; almost nobody could tell you where those towns are. Darel Carrier, from Bristow, once scored 50 points against Sunfsh. Now where is Sunfsh? Or Bristow, for that matter? And when a little team would catch fre, they became all the rage. Like the Cuba Cubs, which wasn't just a who-knowswhere-it-is? school but a really fne team, led by a fabulous ballhandler named Howie Crittenden and a pretty good shooter named Marvin "Doodles" Floyd, who hooked in the winning shot in sudden death second overtime to beat Hindman. Te Cubs, enrollment about 100, then beat big-city Louisville Manual by six in the 1952 fnal. Located in Graves County, Cuba, which is about as far west in Kentucky as Phelps is east, had a calling card. Before games, the Cubs would form a circle, put a record on the P.A. of the famous Harlem Globetrotters song — the one with the whistling "Sweet Georgia Brown" — and whiz the ball around like the real Globetrotters. M eanwhile, back across the river, Corydon won another sectional, at Salem in 1961, when Mick Frederick banked in a shot at the buzzer to beat Milltown. But this time they skipped the bonfre. Corydon wasn't done. Te Panthers moved on to the Jefersonville regional, played in the famous Jef Fieldhouse, one of those Indiana-perfect red-brick barns, with skylights up at the top and acres of bench seats that rose right up to the roof. Jefersonville plays now at a new gym at its new school, but the real Jef Fieldhouse is still there on Court Avenue, downtown. It was built in 1938 under federal sponsorship following the '37 Flood. You've heard the expression about fans hanging from the rafters? Well, fans literally did hang from the rafters for big games in Jef Fieldhouse. If you could get in without a ticket (which was possible), you could go up to the top row of the upper deck and wedge your feet in behind the last row of