a movie review by: Bob Bloom

Despite utilizing the formula common to all "based on true events" sports stories, Glory Road is a winner.

By no means a slam dunk, Glory Road works hard to engage the audience.

The feature is as much a social statement as a rags-to-riches sports drama.

This inspirational feature looks at the Cinderella Texas Western Miners basketball team that in 1966 shocked the sports world by upending the powerhouse University of Kentucky Wildcats, coached by the legendary Adolph Rupp, for the NCAA national championship.

The Miners was the first Division I team to field an all African-American line-up.

What's most interesting about the movie is that coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas) did not set out to revolutionize basketball or the United States.

Circumstances - a minuscule budget and a team considered minor in basketball circles - forced Haskins to improvise and recruit players where he could find them.

Haskins, fresh from coaching a girls high school team, was a driven man who would not let anything - even the lack of funding - stand in the way of creating a winning team. Haskins wanted the best players available. He saw talent, not color.

Nor did he anticipate the furor his recruiting choices would create.

The movie shies away from the question of Haskins' naiveté. Only late in the season does he seem to comprehend the social implications of his actions.

Throughout, Haskins' only concern is fundamental basketball - and winning.

Lucas gives a fiery performance as Haskins, a determined, driven man who would let nothing stand in the way of victory, not even years of unjust tradition.

He berates, cajoles and consoles his players, doing what he must to forge them into a team - and into young men with heart and self-respect.

Jon Voight gives another chameleon-like performance as Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp. He portrays the veteran coach as a wily, ruthless, brash and arrogant man. His private feelings about race, and facing an all-black five, are never brought to the fore.

What is difficult to ascertain about Glory Road is where fact ends and fiction begins. The known facts are these: Haskins scoured the inner cities such as Detroit, Gary, Ind., and New York for talented black players overlooked by white schools; he fielded an all-black starting five against Kentucky in the championship game; and his team prevailed.

What the film presents off the court in the way the white and black Texas Western players interact, the insults heaped by opponents' fans on the court and the abuses suffered by the black players off the court are problematic.

In truth, though, you can accept these dramatizations because they are meant to symbolize the struggles of the players, and are devised as life lessons to help them gain inner strength and create bonds amongst themselves.

The basketball sequences are exciting, especially the NCAA championship game. Despite knowing the outcome, you begin rooting for the Miners.

Today, the sight of five young black men on a basketball court - on any level, high school, college or pro - is taken for granted.

The strength of Glory Road is that it shows the first winning steps of a profound change in American sports and society.

Josh Lucas Photo