![]() He had other great teams.” Scott Skiles backs up bold prediction I don’t know that we win state without him. “The other variable,” Wendel added, “was that we had a great coach. That doesn’t necessarily translate to good players, but we played smart.” “We had a great great player in Scott Skiles, as you know. Key reserves were Jamie Johnson and Mark Stukenborg, the only non-starters to play in the final game. Skiles was joined in the starting lineup by four superb role players - Phil Wendel, a 5-10 guard who averaged 17.1 points, 6-2 front liners Ron Sissel and Barry Peterson, and 5-11 defensive whiz Todd Samuelson.Īll were seniors but Samuelson, a junior who would become a CPA and serve for years on the Plymouth school board. In that championship season, Skiles led the state in scoring at 29.3 points per game, was his team’s leading rebounder and, perhaps above all, was a masterful passer who still owns the NBA single-game record of 30 assists. The two would have more match-ups in the NBA. ![]() “Maybe he didn’t look like a player, but looks are deceiving, ’cause, man, Scott was tough,” Garland said from his home in Nashville, Tenn. Winston Garland, a 5-10 junior on the ’82 Gary Roosevelt team who would grow four inches and play eight seasons in the NBA, said his team wasn’t surprised by Skiles’ ability. What he had, though, was exceptional court awareness, a sharp-shooter’s eye and unmatched drive. Unlike other Division I recruits, the 6-foot-1 guard, who would go on to star at Michigan State and in the NBA, was not particularly athletic. Skiles was an average-looking high school senior who did extraordinary things on the basketball floor. It would be another five years before the state added the three-point shot but even without it, Skiles scored 39 points in the final game - one shy of the record - after scoring 30 in the 62-59 afternoon win over Indianapolis Cathedral. Trailing by two points with four seconds left in regulation and the length of the floor to go, the Pilgrims skillfully executed two passes and got the ball to Scott Skiles, one of those future pros, who nailed a 20-foot buzzer-beater with a hand in his face. Their players - none taller than 6-foot-2 - were overachievers who meshed so well together, evidenced by how three of them combined to miraculously tie the championship game in the final moments. To be sure, the undersized Pilgrims were an easy team to love. “They wanted us to stop at Argos and Rochester, where students came out and cheered for us,” Edison recalled. 31 to the finals the Plymouth team bus was greeted by fans. Letters from Corydon, Evansville … just saying they were pulling for us because we were the small school and physically small.”Įven on the trip down U.S. “I don’t want to exaggerate but I was getting hundreds and hundreds of letters - over a thousand - from people all over the state that didn’t know anything about us. “I just had no idea the number of people we represented - it seemed like every small school in the state was behind us,” Edison said recently. Roosevelt’s enrollment of 2,360 was nearly three times larger than Plymouth’s. Remember, Plymouth’s feat was 15 years before Indiana converted to the much-debated multi-class tourney in 1997. ![]() What fans constantly reminded Edison of after that game 40 years ago this month was that Plymouth was the smallest school to capture the boys state title since tiny Milan’s upset of Muncie Central in 1954. ► More: Meet Marian High School IHSAA state-final bound boys basketball teamĪnd there was Plymouth’s dramatic fourth-quarter comeback that culminated in “The Shot,” leading to two overtimes and the longest state finals game since 1913. ► More: How building a culture led to a Mishawaka Marian high school basketball state title game Played before a sold-out crowd of 17,490 at Market Square Arena, it was a back-and-forth game featuring two future NBA players and a third participant who the following year played for the University of Houston’s celebrated “Phi Slama Jama” team. His Pilgrims had capped an astonishing tourney run by outlasting Gary Roosevelt 75-74 in a two-overtime marathon that ranks as one of the greatest final games ever. It wasn’t until after the Plymouth High School basketball team was back home with the one and only state championship trophy in 1982 that coach Jack Edison fully understood its significance. ![]()
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