This week, the latest episode of America’s Next Top President is being filmed in the heartland as the candidates flood the state of Indiana, vying for Hoosier hearts but mostly their votes.
They ordered cheesesteaks in Philly and scarfed fair food in Iowa. So it only makes sense that in Indiana, where basketball hoops pepper driveways and barn doors, the candidates would invoke the game deeply rooted there.
Ted Cruz tried. And Ted Cruz failed.
At a campaign rally Tuesday night in Knightstown, inside the very gym where the famous movie “Hoosiers” was filmed, the Republican senator from Texas attempted to recreate one of the film’s classic scenes. With the entire gym’s attention on him, Cruz gestured excitedly to the end of the court, where a man in a sweater vest stood in front of the goal atop a red ladder.
In his hands he held a measuring tape, a nod to the scene in Hoosiers where the coach of the underdog basketball team from rural Indiana tries to calm the nerves of his awestruck players. Right after they amble into the Butler Fieldhouse in the movie, where the team was set to play in the state final game, the coach measures the height of the goal, then says this: “Ten feet. I think you’ll find that’s the exact same measurements as our gym back in Hickory.”
Thanks for the pep talk, coach.
Here’s Ted Cruz’s version: “You know, the amazing thing about that basketball ring here in Indiana, it’s the same height as it is in New York City and every other place in this country. And there is nothing that Hoosiers cannot do.”
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He called it a ring. In the land of the free and the home of the basketball lover, where children are bred to love the sound of tennis shoes squeaking on hardwood floors and Bobby Knight is a household name, Ted Cruz called the basketball hoop a basketball ring.
Speaking of Bobby Knight, the infamous former Indiana University basketball coach best known for angrily throwing a chair across the court during a 1985 game, will be attending a rally for Donald Trump in Indianapolis on Wednesday, according to the Indianapolis Star.
Hopefully The Donald won’t tell the crowd Knight threw a table.