Did all of the actors on the team have high school basketball experience?

Not quite. Surprisingly, actor Maris Valainis, who portrayed the movie's star player, Jimmy Chitwood, was the only actor on the Hickory team who hadn't played basketball in high school. Valainis was only 5-foot-6 as a teenager, and he got cut three straight years from his high school basketball team. For the scene where his character Jimmy shoots baskets while he listens to Coach Dale (Gene Hackman), Maris Valainis said that he "wasn't even listening to him. I was just concentrating on making them and I made one and they kept going in." Today, the Hoosiers actor is a golf pro at Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course in Irvine, California. He has a 1-handicap.