Glory Road

A sports film about something that happened in American college basketball. Don Haskins is coaching at a girls' high school when he is called to a small university named Texas Western. There is no money, the gym is old and good players do not come. Haskins looks elsewhere: he finds the black players the big programmes of the day were not interested in and puts them on the team. In 1966 that is not a usual decision and the reaction is immediate, from inside the university and on the road. The team starts winning and goes all the way to the final. Facing them is the strongest programme of the period. Haskins starts that game with an all-black five, a first in the country's basketball. What the film is interested in is not the game but the attitude that changed afterwards. The decision permanently affected how players were recruited in college sport. Josh Lucas plays Haskins and Derek Luke one of the players. Jon Voight is in the cast. James Gartner directed. The production follows the real events but combines some characters and incidents. A heartening example for anyone who likes sports films and stories based on real events. For a viewer expecting detailed history, the film stays inside genre convention.