Remembering The Argos Dragons ... 40 Years Later
March 12, 2019 at 2:19 a.m.
By Roger Grossman-
It was a warm spring day in Indiana. The sun was out early in the day, it rained around noon, and it was windy during the evening.
That was a day that basketball fans in this area will never forget, because we can all look back on that day and say, “THAT day we all saw Hoosier Hysteria with our own eyes.”
On that day, the field of the Fort Wayne Semistate at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum consisted of the Michigan City Rogers Raiders, led by sophomore Dan Palombizio (played college basketball at Ball State, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame inductee 2013); the Fort Wayne Harding Hawks, led by junior Jim Master (1980 Indiana Mr. Basketball who played for three SEC championship teams at Kentucky) who had just moved from Plymouth to Fort Wayne in the summer of 1978; the Marion Giants, who had won state titles in 1975 and 1976 and were led by brothers Lorenzo and Larry Pettiford; and the Argos Dragons.
Who?
The Argos Dragons – undefeated and in the midst of a state-record 76-game regular season win streak. Led by no Indiana All-Stars, no Division I basketball players, no members of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
A school of 276 students in the top four grades. According to the current enrollment numbers from the IHSAA, they would be the 18th largest school in Class 1A. A team from a small farming community known more as a founding member of soccer in Indiana than for a basketball program that had just won its first sectional in school history the year before.
There they were, these sharp-shooting, high-octane farm kids from southern Marshall County who earned their spot in the Sweet 16 by obliterating everyone in their path, including their rivals from Plymouth and the Elkhart Central Blue Blazers team that had knocked them out in the regional final at North Side Gym the previous March.
A caravan of cars and pickup trucks with “Go Big D” written in soap on the windows marched down US 30 to Fort Wayne, and one-by-one filed into the Coliseum parking lot.
Marion beat Rogers in the opener, and Argos held off Harding 66-64 in the second semifinal.
It set up the unlikely matchup of “David and Goliath” – Argos vs. Marion.
My seat for the day was in the corner of the hockey boards. I was in fifth grade in 1979, so my buddies and I had seats that didn’t give us the best view – we didn’t care.
The championship game was a back-and-forth affair. Both teams executed at a tremendously high level considering the pressure on them. The fourth quarter was epic, with the lead shifting back and forth.
The Giants scored with eight seconds left to take an 83-82 lead, and the Dragons took a time-out to set up a final play.
I still have the radio call from Rick Derf and Corky Lingle of the Plymouth radio station on cassette. I don’t need to hear those last eight seconds to remember how it went down. It ended with Derf saying “into O’Dell … jumps … shoots … misses.”
And then what happened next, well, is Hoosier history.
Bill O’Dell did in fact miss that little jump shot from inside the free thrown line at the near end of the Coliseum from my perspective. But as the Giants turned to watch the ball bounce straight back toward the shooter, O’Dell was headed to meet that ball coming back his way.
From my seat, all I could see were the tops of the people’s heads in front of me, the rim, the ball just above rim level, and a hand rising above them all to tip the ball in.
Bedlam ensued. Jumping and hugging and screaming and, yes, some crying.
In the hockey press box high above court level, Derf had yelled “TIPPED IN … IT’S GOOD” and then he and Corky followed that with 13 seconds of incoherent utterances of pure and unrestrained joy.
Argos won the semistate, 84-83.
They were going to Indy, those Dragons. They were going to play for a state title.
Not lost in O’Dell’s heroics was that it came just days before the 25th anniversary of Bobby Plump’s game-winning shot to win the 1954 state championship for tiny Milan at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
In the hour that followed, someone in the Argos section left the Coliseum without their car keys and didn’t seem to miss them, and an 11-year old boy was summoned to the scorers’ table by the public address announcer because his parents couldn’t find him.
My mom and dad were annoyed, but they got over it pretty quickly.
The Dragons lost to Anderson in the state semifinal at Market Square Arena, but legend spends very little time dwelling on that.
What Argos people, and everyone else in the state, will always remember about that night 40 years ago this week is that hand on that ball in the last of those eight seconds – eight seconds that changed a lot of people for the rest of their lives … including me.
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It was a warm spring day in Indiana. The sun was out early in the day, it rained around noon, and it was windy during the evening.
That was a day that basketball fans in this area will never forget, because we can all look back on that day and say, “THAT day we all saw Hoosier Hysteria with our own eyes.”
On that day, the field of the Fort Wayne Semistate at the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum consisted of the Michigan City Rogers Raiders, led by sophomore Dan Palombizio (played college basketball at Ball State, Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame inductee 2013); the Fort Wayne Harding Hawks, led by junior Jim Master (1980 Indiana Mr. Basketball who played for three SEC championship teams at Kentucky) who had just moved from Plymouth to Fort Wayne in the summer of 1978; the Marion Giants, who had won state titles in 1975 and 1976 and were led by brothers Lorenzo and Larry Pettiford; and the Argos Dragons.
Who?
The Argos Dragons – undefeated and in the midst of a state-record 76-game regular season win streak. Led by no Indiana All-Stars, no Division I basketball players, no members of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.
A school of 276 students in the top four grades. According to the current enrollment numbers from the IHSAA, they would be the 18th largest school in Class 1A. A team from a small farming community known more as a founding member of soccer in Indiana than for a basketball program that had just won its first sectional in school history the year before.
There they were, these sharp-shooting, high-octane farm kids from southern Marshall County who earned their spot in the Sweet 16 by obliterating everyone in their path, including their rivals from Plymouth and the Elkhart Central Blue Blazers team that had knocked them out in the regional final at North Side Gym the previous March.
A caravan of cars and pickup trucks with “Go Big D” written in soap on the windows marched down US 30 to Fort Wayne, and one-by-one filed into the Coliseum parking lot.
Marion beat Rogers in the opener, and Argos held off Harding 66-64 in the second semifinal.
It set up the unlikely matchup of “David and Goliath” – Argos vs. Marion.
My seat for the day was in the corner of the hockey boards. I was in fifth grade in 1979, so my buddies and I had seats that didn’t give us the best view – we didn’t care.
The championship game was a back-and-forth affair. Both teams executed at a tremendously high level considering the pressure on them. The fourth quarter was epic, with the lead shifting back and forth.
The Giants scored with eight seconds left to take an 83-82 lead, and the Dragons took a time-out to set up a final play.
I still have the radio call from Rick Derf and Corky Lingle of the Plymouth radio station on cassette. I don’t need to hear those last eight seconds to remember how it went down. It ended with Derf saying “into O’Dell … jumps … shoots … misses.”
And then what happened next, well, is Hoosier history.
Bill O’Dell did in fact miss that little jump shot from inside the free thrown line at the near end of the Coliseum from my perspective. But as the Giants turned to watch the ball bounce straight back toward the shooter, O’Dell was headed to meet that ball coming back his way.
From my seat, all I could see were the tops of the people’s heads in front of me, the rim, the ball just above rim level, and a hand rising above them all to tip the ball in.
Bedlam ensued. Jumping and hugging and screaming and, yes, some crying.
In the hockey press box high above court level, Derf had yelled “TIPPED IN … IT’S GOOD” and then he and Corky followed that with 13 seconds of incoherent utterances of pure and unrestrained joy.
Argos won the semistate, 84-83.
They were going to Indy, those Dragons. They were going to play for a state title.
Not lost in O’Dell’s heroics was that it came just days before the 25th anniversary of Bobby Plump’s game-winning shot to win the 1954 state championship for tiny Milan at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
In the hour that followed, someone in the Argos section left the Coliseum without their car keys and didn’t seem to miss them, and an 11-year old boy was summoned to the scorers’ table by the public address announcer because his parents couldn’t find him.
My mom and dad were annoyed, but they got over it pretty quickly.
The Dragons lost to Anderson in the state semifinal at Market Square Arena, but legend spends very little time dwelling on that.
What Argos people, and everyone else in the state, will always remember about that night 40 years ago this week is that hand on that ball in the last of those eight seconds – eight seconds that changed a lot of people for the rest of their lives … including me.
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