FRANKLIN, Indiana — This month, Indiana is making history by hosting every basketball game in the NCAA Tournament for the first time ever.
Of course, basketball is so much a party of Indiana history, so when and where did “Hoosier Hysteria” truly begin?
Several historians on the south side believe they have the answer, with a 100-year-old team from Johnson County called the "Franklin Wonder Five.”
“I think it's definitely worth saying that Franklin had won the first basketball dynasty,” said David Pfeiffer, the director of the Johnson County Museum of History. “They were the first to win three in a row.”
According to a newly-erected Indiana Historical Marker outside the “Franklin Wonder Five Gymnasium” on the Franklin College campus, “The Franklin Wonder Five dominated Indiana basketball in the 1920s as the sport’s popularity grew dramatically. The team won an unprecedented three consecutive state championships at the high school level from 1920-1922.”
“They would have lines wrapped all around the block to get tickets,” Pfeiffer said. “They had such huge crowds for their high school team, they often played their games right here in this gym at Franklin College.”
The Franklin Wonder Five recorded 104 wins and only 10 losses while in high school.
“After graduating, many players followed Coach Ernest 'Griz' Wagner to Franklin College, where they won state collegiate championships in 1923 and 1924,” the Historical Marker continues.
Coach "Griz" ended up influencing all sports teams’ names at Franklin College.
“The fact that we consider ourselves ‘Grizzlies,’ that students will talk about themselves as proud, Franklin College Grizzlies is all connected to the work of Coach 'Griz' Wagner,” said Meredith Clark-Wiltz, an associate professor of history at Franklin College. “It's not just a team name, it’s also a slogan. We always say, ‘Go Griz!’”
When they started at Franklin College in 1922, the Wonder Five won 50 consecutive games over a two-year span.
“Since there wasn't an NCAA tournament, there were just individual state champions, so they won a string of college championships as well,” Pfeiffer said. “They beat teams like Notre Dame, Butler, Wisconsin and Purdue. They even beat a professional team."
In 1923, the Detroit Free Press called the Franklin Wonder Five “the best collegiate team ever seen” in the state of Indiana.
As the Historical Marker concludes, “The Wonder Five attracted crowds from across the state to the small town of Franklin as 'Hoosier Hysteria' took root. Considered among the best in the Midwest at the time, the team included future Indiana Basketball Hall of Famers Burl Friddle, John Gant, Coach Wagner, and Robert 'Fuzzy' Vandivier, who was also elected into the Naismith Hall of Fame in 1975.”
Click here to read more about the Franklin Wonder Five, which included more than a dozen team members during the course of their scholastic careers.