Hoosiers

Graham King has worked with countless A-listers: Leonardo DiCaprio, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Jack Nicholson, Cameron Diaz and Daniel-Day Lewis, to name just a few. But ask the Oscar-winning producer of "The Departed" which celebrities made him giddy like a star-struck teen, and he won't mention any actor, saying instead it was the players from the Chelsea FC soccer team. The day the English-born filmmaker won the best picture Academy Award for "The Departed," King awoke before dawn to watch his beloved soccer squad defeat Arsenal in the Carling Cup final (one friend says it was a sweeter victory for King than his Oscar triumph over "Little Miss Sunshine")

Dennis Hopper, the maverick director and costar of the landmark 1969 counterculture film classic "Easy Rider" whose drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation as a Hollywood bad boy preceded his return to sobriety and a career resurgence in the films " Hoosiers" and "Blue Velvet," died Saturday. He was 74. A longtime resident of Venice who also was known as a photographer, artist and collector of modern art, Hopper died at his home of complications from prostate cancer, said Alex Hitz, a friend of the family.

The hard part about real life, as opposed to movies, is you can't edit film on the two shots star Gordon Hayward missed in the final five seconds that would have given Butler the NCAA title over Duke. You can't let Hayward take the baseline jumper until he makes it, or do a dozen retakes on the hold-your-breath half-court heave at the buzzer that clanked off the rim. That only works, most times, in your dreams, in the driveway. OK, it worked once, in Butler's gym, for an underdog Indiana high school team, in 1954, and they made a movie, but when do sequels ever work?

Butler had the adorable panting Bulldog mascot, the typecasted good-guy players and a Hollywood script three-fourths written. But the NCAA championship game isn't a movie and sometimes the quarterback gets the girl, the rich guy wins the lottery and, in this case, Goliath bats down David's slingshot pebble. Duke, one of the giants in college basketball, staved off what would have been an epic upset by beating underdog Butler, 61-59, on Monday night in the NCAA championship game in Lucas Oil Stadium.

The man who made perhaps the most famous shot in cinematic hoops history never played high school basketball. "I tried out three years in a row," Maris Valainis says, "and I got cut three years in a row." But as Jimmy Chitwood in the venerated 1986 film "Hoosiers," Valainis calmly sinks the game-winning jumper to give the Hickory High Huskers the 1952 Indiana state title. Movie fans haven't forgotten. Valainis says he's still recognized from his portrayal of Chitwood, whose shy, reserved personality is similar to his own. "When I'm playing, yes," says Valainis, whose picture-perfect shooting form can still be seen in Southland pickup games, "and when I'm out sometimes too. "If I'm in a social situation, I'll get a lot of, ‘You look really familiar to me.' And then finally someone will figure it out, which is amazing to me that 25 years later people would remember.

Butler Coach Brad Stevens was a little taken aback during Wednesday's pre-West Regional news conference. "Did you say loser's image?" Stevens said. Told the question was about Butler's " Hoosiers" image, Stevens was relieved. "I was like, ‘Boy, that's direct,' " Stevens said, then faster than you can say "Jimmy Chitwood," he launched into a pat answer: "If people want to think that about our team, then that's OK." The talk will continue, and will be amplified, should Butler beat Kansas State on Saturday in the regional final and return to Indianapolis next week for a home game in the Final Four.

How odd it looked last week to see thousands of Hoosiers flock to a noisy Sarah Palin rally in mid-October, in a state where dramatic, coming-down-the-stretch presidential campaigns are almost always distant events. Someone, it would seem, is messing with the clocks again in Indiana. But there the Republican faithful were, cheering loudly for the vice presidential nominee, just as thousands of Democrats did a week earlier in Indianapolis for Barack Obama.

John Pont, 80, a football coach who guided Indiana University to its only Rose Bowl appearance 40 years ago and also coached at Northwestern, Yale and Miami of Ohio, died Tuesday at his home in Oxford, Ohio. He had been fighting cancer. Pont coached the Hoosiers from 1965 to 1972. In the 1967 season, Indiana was 9-2 before representing the Big Ten Conference in the Rose Bowl in 1968. The Hoosiers lost, 14-3, to USC's national championship team that featured running back O.J. Simpson.

When Sen. Barack Obama laced up his basketball shoes Friday evening for a three-on-three game with some players half his age, he was doing something that could prove important should he become the Democratic nominee: looking young and healthy. In a rare move by his presidential campaign, network news cameras were allowed to record Obama, 46, moving up and down the court, playing a game that is almost a religion in this state.