very good

Rating: 9/10 (22 January 2006)

Thought it was very good. The previous commenter obviously missed the point of the movie. That point was that Texas Western was going against 5 white players that were very good and a coach(Adolph Rupp) who was REPUTED to be racist. However Pat Riley has said publicly that he never heard Rupp make a negative comment about blacks and by virtue of the fact that he played for Rupp for 4 years doubts the veracity of this claim. Blacks were an established part of College basketball at this time because Cinncinati had one 1 National Championship and been to 2 other final 4's with Oscar Robertson. The other big point is this was a southern team and Loyola and Cincinati were northern teams. Don't forget historically this is 2 years after LBJ passed the civil rights act of 1964 and 2 years before MLK JR was shot. The south was very inflamed @ the time because they were against the civil rights act. Also this was the year that interrupted the UCLA run of championships. Some people at the time felt that the reason UCLA was not involved was because their National Championship team had just been DISMANTLED BY THEIR FRESHMAN TEAM in a scrimmage which was led by Lew Alcindor(the future Kareem Abdul Jabbar) and they didn't even make the tournament. Also the previous commenter fails to point out that while yes Kansas has a black player who is an all-American they are also in the North. The one inconsistency is that in the final game Jon Voight(Rupp) calls for a flagrant foul. There was no such thing as a flagrant foul in 1966.
2 casting things Emily Deschanel was Don Haskins' wife Mary and Tatyana M. Ali was Bobby Jo Hill's girlfriend(don't remember hearing her character's name in the movie though)