Now that most people’s NCAA brackets are blown up and they’re getting ready to enjoy the final game, it might be a good time to take another look at some fictional college basketball teams in the movies.
1. The Absent Minded Professor Fred MacMurray plays a college professor whose accidental invention of “flubber” (“flying rubber”) gives the school’s basketball team some extra bounce.
2. Tall Story Jane Fonda’s first movie has her co-starring with Anthony Perkins (before “Psycho”) in the story of a basketball star thrown off his game by the attentions of a determined young woman.
3. Glory Road This is the true story of coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas), who played the first all-black team in the NCAA in 1965 at Texas Western college (now University of Texas at El Paso). Lucas and Derek Luke as one of his players give beautiful performances in this stirring film.
4. Blue Chips stars Nick Nolte in a story of corruption in college recruiting, written by Ron Shelton of “White Men Can’t Jump” and “Bull Durham.”
5. “The Air Up There” A gentler college recruiting story has Kevin Bacon traveling to Africa to persuade the son of a tribal leader who has “the hang time of a helium balloon” to join his team.