Superb! Simply superb basketball movie, and it happens to be true.

Rating: Null/10 (17 July 2006)

I was a college junior in 1965, at a deep southern university. We had an outstanding basketball team, and one star was Elvin Ivory, a tall black player. The only black player on our team. There was no controversy, probably because the team remained mostly white. That is fact, not judgement.
This movie, "Glory Road", begins in 1965, where the new coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) inherits an all-white basketball team that expects to lose most games in this El Paso college, and do. But Haskins loves basketball and loves winning, and refuses to stand still. He and his assistants go nationwide, as far as inner city New York, to find capable black players who are mostly neglected by major schools which are typically still all white, as was Kentucky for example. It wasn't that Haskins was trying to make a statement, because he wasn't. He just couldn't get white players interested in his "loser" school, and his only hope was to recruit the black players.
What makes this movie so good is the genuine and fantastic true story, one that could not have been believed, had it been fabricated. Plus, the basketball scenes are very well shot and edited, showing what each coach may have been telling players during the brief time outs when strategy was set.
SPOILERS FOLLOW, although history records what happened. Coach Haskins was a tough taskmaster, insisted that his players play HIS way. But while his way worked with a championship girls team the year before, had them losing their first game badly. With nothing to lose, he let his players do it THEIR way, they came from behind and won, to everyone's surprise. In fact they reached a record of 17-0 that season and were ranked in the national top 10 of major colleges before they lost a game. Regrouping they made it to the NCAA final four, and ultimately played multi-champion Kentucky, coached by famous Adolph Rupp (Jon Voight), for the championship. Coach Haskins started 5 black players, unheard of!! And they won in double overtime, for the completion of perhaps the biggest surprise season ever, going from traditional losers to the best team in the NCAA. The ending credits has a nice touch, snippets of interview from the real Haskins and many of the players who were on that team, plus Pat Riley who played for Kentucky in 1966 and became one of the better NBA coaches.