On a late-January day in southwest Indiana, Jack Butcher and his Loogootee Lions boarded their team bus.
The bus was bound for one of Loogootee's chief rivals, Springs Valley High School, a conference foe with a starting forward who with each passing game was solidifying his place in Indiana mythos: Larry Bird.
In the previous three meetings between the teams, Jack Butcher's group had fared well against Jim Jones' team. Even with the sensational play of Bird, Loogootee had beat Springs Valley in its first three meetings with Bird on the team.
But year four, Bird's senior season, took on a circus vibe as the game approached.
"Even during school in the morning, there was lines all the way around the building to get tickets to get in," recounted Bird of the matchup.
Springs Valley's gymnasium has a design that makes opponents feel as if a wave of fans is about to crash down upon them at any given moment. When you walk into the gym from street level, you're already at the top floor. The subterranean style gives the impression of a basketball bunker, and on this night in 1974, there were enough people in the gym to send a fire marshal into cardiac arrest.
The listed seating capacity at the time was 2,700 according to the local paper, but for this game, well over 3,000 were in attendance, some estimate as many as 5,000. It was so packed that night, that by the start of the junior varsity game prior to the marquee matchup, the gymnasium was already filled out. Fans, desperate to see the action, climbed on the shoulders of others, while some even ascended onto the rafters for a better view.
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"They kept letting people come in," recalled Wayne Flick with a laugh. Flick was a starting forward for Butcher's team in '74, and remembers the game with clarity over 40 years later. "By the time the varsity game started, the aisles where you walk up and down in the gymnasium, they were full. There were people sitting on the floor three, and four foot deep, sitting on the floor. When you took the ball out of bounds, people had to get out of your way so you could step out of bounds."
At the time, everyone knew the game was a big deal, but few expected that nearly a half-century after the fact, the contest would be remembered in such detail. And that speaks to the career paths of both Bird and Coach Butcher after the game.
Bird, of course, went on to college and NBA stardom, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players to ever step onto a basketball court.
Butcher — who is being honored on Wednesday night by the Pacers as a Hickory honoree — continued coaching for almost 30 more years, piling up one winning season after another, until eventually becoming the all-time winningest coach in Indiana high school basketball history with 806 wins, which includes four undefeated seasons.
What makes Butcher's accomplishments as a coach all-the-more impressive was that he did it with the teams he was handed. He did not recruit. He took what was in the small town of Loogootee, and molded players to become pieces of teams that played fundamental, winning basketball.
"If we were going to survive in the big games, if we were going to advance into the tournament, I became convinced that we were going to have to be fundamentally sound," Butcher said. "And everybody was going to have to do their role."
As soon as the ball was tipped at the Springs Valley gym on that Tuesday night in late January, two things became clear. The first was that the game was going to be a tight contest throughout. The second?
It. Was. Hot.
"It actually got so hot in the gym that the beams on the ceiling started sweating, and they had to stop the game every three or four minutes to wipe moisture off the floor from the beams sweating," Flick said.
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With each Springs Valley basket, the home crowd roared in approval with a deafening wave of applause.
"If you ever wanted to drop anybody back into time and (they said) 'tell me what Indiana basketball is like, or was like,' that's where I'd put them," said Jeff Meyer, a student manager on the 1974 Loogootee team.
One of the strangest moments of the entire game happened off of a tip-off. The players were misaligned to start, and the ball was slapped right into the hands of Bird. In the confusion of the moment, Bird immediately put up a shot since he was directly under the basket, however, it turned out he was under his own basket.
"Bird did score for us that night," recalled Meyer with a laugh.
Luckily for Larry Legend, due to the misalignment of the tipoff, the basket didn't count, but the frenzied game only got stranger from there.
Asked about the hallmarks of a Butcher-coached team, Bird remembered that Butcher teams "never beat themselves," and this game was no different.
After Bill Butcher, the son of Jack Butcher, hit a clutch baseline shot with 31 seconds remaining to put Loogootee up 64-63, Springs Valley fouled to get possession in the remaining seconds.
During the timeout, Bird's coach Jim Jones laid out the game plan, and offered the crucial reminder that the Blackhawks had no timeouts left. That reminder was lost to the ears of Jay "Beezer" Carnes, who in the heat of the moment tried to signal for timeout after coming down with a rebound from a missed Loogootee free throw, triggering a technical foul.
"Of course it was Beezer, it was always Beezer," Bird joked. "And they got a technical foul and the ball back, so that sort of ended the game in a bad way."
The Lions came out on top 66-63, topping Bird's team in front of Bob Knight, who was there scouting, along with several other college coaches. As the fans streamed out of the sauna of a gymnasium, Jack Butcher and his team headed back to the bus having gone 4-for-4 against Larry Bird Springs Valley teams (although Bird didn't play in the matchup his sophomore year).
"We prepared and practiced pretty much the same way," Butcher said of the games against Bird.
To Meyer, the student manager, one part of the game that has always stood out in his memory isn't the game itself, but the bus ride there.
"How calm everybody was," Meyer explained. "We weren't overhyped, we were confident, we knew we were prepared, Coach Butcher had us ready to go. The thought of losing that game never entered our minds, we knew we were going to win."
And win they did, in a game that is remembered by players and fans with the same amount of precise detail that people recall the first steps of their children. Which makes sense, given the prestigious career arcs that followed for Butcher and Bird.
"You don't realize at the time, but they're going to be talking about this game forever," Flick said. "And you're a part of it."