With March Madness‘ Final Four Weekend now in full swing, college basketball is very much top of mind in the national consciousness.
To wit, a terrific fresh New York Times bestselling book from Keith O’Brien, Heartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream and the Miracle of Larry Bird, takes a look at future Boston Celtics Hall of Fame forward Larry Bird’s Cinderella-story run with the Indiana State Sycamores in the 1970s.
Heartland isn’t just about Larry Bird’s NCAA glories, however. O’Brien tells Bleacher Nation that some key supporting characters had an outsized role in Bird’s rise.
Bill Hodges, who would eventually lead Bird and the Sycamores to the NCAA Tournament title game in 1979 as the club’s head coach, was the man who — as an assistant under Bob King at the time — convinced Bird to return to college ball after washing out at two programs ahead of what would have been his freshman season in 1974-75.
“I think Bill Hodges is an unsung hero in this story who has never truly gotten his due. It is Bill Hodges who pulls Larry Bird back from the brink. I believe without Bill Hodges, we don’t know Larry Bird’s name,” O’Brien posits. “And Bill Hodges is his own underdog story all about him. He’s a down-on-his-luck assistant coach in the spring of 1975. He’s, in that spring, on his third job in three years. None of them at big places, none of them at big schools.
“His career is moving in the wrong direction if it’s moving anywhere at all. And it’s Bill Hodges who decides to take a big swing and go see if they can find Larry Bird down in French Lick. And I say ‘big swing,’ but not really! If you scour the newspapers and magazines, as I did, in the winter of ’74-’75, no one is writing stories about, ‘Where is Larry Bird?’ or ‘What has happened to Larry Bird?’ No one cares about what has happened to Larry Bird. He is already gone, even in the little towns in southern Indiana.”
© Indianapolis Star-USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn ImagesBird had split his freshman preseason between Bob Knight’s Indiana Hoosiers and Northwood Institute’s basketball program, ultimately ditching both squads and opting to work odd jobs in his hometown of French Lick, Indiana, while playing for a local industrial league team, Hancock Construction.
“And so Bill Hodges finds him. He does connect with him on a personal level. Bill is from rural Indiana [Zionsville], just like Larry. He knows what it is to be poor and overlooked, just like Larry. It is Bill Hodges who coaxes Larry to come back to college and enroll at Indiana State,” O’Brien notes. “And then, once Larry gets there, Bill Hodges is doing things for Larry that Bobby Knight never would have done — and never did — at Indiana. He’s getting him set up, making sure he’s surrounded by friends, making sure he’s comfortable, helping him get a job so he has a little money in his pocket. Bill understood what Larry needed in a way that Bobby Knight didn’t.”
How Bill Hodges’ Indiana State Roster-Building Empowered Larry Bird to Succeed
Upon recruiting Bird back to college (he had to redshirt for his inaugural Indiana State season in 1975-76), Hodges went about putting the pieces together who would help the Sycamores ascend to the ultimate NCAA Tournament stage.
With King at the helm, and facing a smaller 32-team bracket, Indiana State failed to advance to the Big Dance in either ’76-’77 or ’77-’78, instead competing in the NIT. But the Sycamores started off Bird’s 1978-79 senior season with a 33-0 record, before ultimately falling to Magic Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans in that 1979 championship game.
“Bill Hodges is fundamental to this story. And from that moment forward, it is Bill Hodges who is building this team around Larry. Bill Hodges, who’s recruiting Carl Nicks, who’ll be the star guard with Larry in ’78-’79. Bill Hodges, who is recruiting the other pieces around Larry that will fit together in ’78-’79,” O’Brien adds. “It is a real team, and I think that’s another thing that has just been wrongly overlooked in the previous tellings of this story. It’s not a Bird story. It is a story of a team, an unlikely underdog team. And I don’t think anyone makes that more clear than Larry Bird’s senior-year roommate Bob Heaton. It is Bob Heaton who’s gonna make the most important shots during that miracle season, not Larry Bird. Were it not for Bob Heaton, there’s no miracle. There maybe isn’t a Bird-Magic game, maybe all this history is different.”
Hodges guided Indiana State to a cumulative 67-48 record during his four-season tenure at the school. He was named the NCAA Coach of the Year during that inaugural season with ISU. The club was inducted into the Indiana State Athletics Hall of Fame in 2000, and Hodges was an individual inductee in 2019.
As a head coach, he went on to lead the Georgia College Bobcats from 1986-91 and the Mercer Bears from 1991-97. All told, he boasts a 239-208 collegiate head coaching record.
Heaton’s basketball career ended after his 1979-80 season with the Sycamores, but he has gone on to enjoy extended political success in the intervening decades. He’s currently serving District 46 in the Indiana House of Representatives, a gig Heaton has enjoyed since 2010.
Among Bird’s teammates from that charmed 1978-79 season, only one — two-time All-Missouri Valley College guard Carl Nicks — made the NBA. Others did get opportunities in other basketball markets. Forward Brad Miley tooled around in pro leagues in Iceland and Australia. Center Alex Gilbert also played professionally in Iceland.
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