Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
High school basketball is to Indiana what high school football is to Texas, and prior to a couple of years ago, it was hard to imagine a scenario where most people would prioritize a Hoosiers football game over a big showdown on the hardwood. However, that dream has become a reality, and multiple high-stakes matchups were played earlier than scheduled due to the Peach Bowl.
Most basketball fans are aware the sport was invented by James Naismith, who introduced it to the world after he nailed up a peach basket inside a YMCA in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1891.
In 1925, he was among the 15,000 spectators who headed to the Indiana State Fairgrounds for a high school basketball tournament, and the fervor he witnessed inside the gym where it was held led him to write, “Basketball may have been invented in Massachusetts, but it was made for Indiana.”
That so-called “Hoosier hysteria” is still alive and well more than a century later, and Indiana’s flagship university has firmly been a Basketball School for the vast majority of that stretch. However, the tides have turned in dramatic fashion since Curt Cignetti arrived in Bloomington last season, as the football team is currently one win away from playing for a national championship.
Indiana will have the chance to punch their ticket to the title game and face off against Miami with a win over Oregon in the Peach Bowl, and that matchup forced some high schools in the state to take what would have previously been an unthinkable step.
Multiple high schools in Indiana rescheduled marquee basketball games that were slated to be played during the Peach Bowl
New Albany and Jeffersonville have one of the fiercest high school rivalries in Indiana, and their boys’ basketball teams were supposed to go head-to-head on the former’s court on the evening of January 9th.
However, according to Fox59, that was just one of a number of contests that ended up being pushed to Thursday night due to Indiana’s presence in the Peach Bowl.
Pike and Fishers, who are among the best teams in the state according to MaxPreps, also ended up playing a day earlier than they were supposed to (the latter earned a 76-67 win), and a bunch of other schools around the state ended up following suit.
Some, including Bloomington South and Bloomington North, decided to push their games to a future date instead of scrambling at the last minute, and the outlet spoke to a number of players, parents, and fans who said they were relieved they wouldn’t have to choose between those contests and the Peach Bowl.
Based on what Cignetti has achieved during his first couple of years in Indiana, high schools might want to have some contingency plans for games during College Football Playoff season going forward.