Water Damage Restoration in Sellersburg, IN

Indianapolis Star

This is the first of a series in which IndyStar IU Insider Zach Osterman talks with former IU basketball players and asks them to recall why they picked the Hoosiers during their recruitment.

There was one good restaurant on the road between Sellersburg and Jeffersonville in 1970. Steve Green knew it well.

A standout basketball player at Silver Creek High School in Sellersburg, Green had been so excited when he received his first college recruiting questionnaire as a sophomore that he returned it immediately. It didn’t matter to him where Mars Hill College was — he was interested.

But by the fall of his senior year, Mars Hill had been dwarfed by the big boys: Auburn, Vanderbilt, Florida, Kentucky. Green had always wanted to go to IU, but in those days, before ESPN, southern Indiana was as much SEC country as it was the Big Ten’s backyard.

One of Green’s chief rivals was Mike Flynn, a guard from Jeffersonville who wound up in Lexington, was getting interest from a lot of the same schools. So much so, in fact, that coaches would see them both on a swing through the area. With recruiting rules more lax in those days — in particular the rules about how often you could take a player out to dinner — Green and Flynn made sure to introduce all their suitors to the best meal around.

“There was one nice place. Mike and I both knew it,” Green said. “There were literally times he’d be with the coach from Florida, and I’d be with a coach from Vanderbilt, or Auburn, and then next night, we’d be there again. They’d switch.”

Green’s place in IU lore now is well-established. The first recruit to commit to Bob Knight after Knight left Army for Indiana, Green became a cornerstone of Knight’s early teams.

He wasn’t always destined for Bloomington. He’d dreamed of playing for IU, where his uncle was a professor and his aunt was a counselor. But the program wasn’t on sure footing then.

And Green himself needed a breakout moment. It came in his sophomore season, against one of the legendary teams in Indiana high school basketball history,

“Our sophomore year, ’69, we made it all the way to semistate, single class, played at Hinkle against George (McGinnis)’s team,” Green said. “All I have to say to people is George’s team in ’69, and they go ‘Oh yeah.’”

McGinnis and Steve Downing, who would both eventually attend IU as well, led Indianapolis Washington to a perfect 31-0 record that season, and a state title. McGinnis set a state tournament scoring record in the process.

Silver Creek fell victim to Washington’s dominance, but earned attention in the process.

“We got noticed by the Indianapolis press. Little Silver Creek, southern Indiana,” Green said. “For us, making it to Indianapolis was a huge deal on so many levels.”

From there, Green’s recruitment expanded quickly. Mars Hill’s questionnaire was replaced by assistants and head coaches in the stands for games and practices. With no AAU basketball in the summer, coaches did most of their recruiting back then through the high school season.

“By the time I was a senior, we had coaches at every game,” Green said. “No disrespect if you’re a Mars Hill grad, but they weren’t from Mars Hill anymore. Big Big Ten, big SEC (presence).”

Green kept his recruitment open through his senior year.

On a visit to Duke, he saw a group of long-haired musicians at a hotel pool he only later realized were the Moody Blues. During a trip to Kentucky, a local businessman who would be Green’s community sponsor if he came to UK showed his parents where he’d keep his car while on campus.

“My dad just right on cue, like a great straight man, ‘Steve doesn’t have a car,’” Green said, laughing, “and the guy doesn’t miss a beat, ‘Where he’ll keep his car.’”

But he hadn’t committed by the end of his senior season, and his affection for IU hadn’t abated.

Green grew up attending Branch McCracken’s summer camps. He idolized the Van Arsdale twins. Knight convinced Green to visit for Little 500 weekend. He stayed at the Sigma Nu house.

“I won’t tell the coaches,” Green recalled saying to himself, “but this I can see myself doing a little bit!”

Ultimately, Knight made the difference. Green signed on.

“There was something about him, about his vision,” Green said, “and very honestly, it allowed me to live the dream I had when I was eight years old. I’d heard all these IU stories from Branch McCracken, Walt Bellamy, Bobby Leonard, Jimmy Rayl, the Vans — I want to be one of those guys.”

The freshman ineligibility rule still existed then, so Green didn’t play until 1972. From there, he became a cornerstone of Knight’s early success at IU, which included four-straight Big Ten titles, two Final Four appearances and a national title in 1976.

That 1976 team remains the last to go undefeated across the course of an entire college basketball season, but even some members of that team will contend the Hoosiers were better in 1975, Green’s senior year. They went 31-1 that season, losing to Kentucky in the Elite Eight with star forward Scott May hampered by injury.

ORAL HISTORY: On IU's historic, undefeated 1976 season

Falling just short of perfection in 1975 motivated Indiana to finish the job the next season, even without Green and the other members of Knight’s first full recruiting class. Today, the two teams overlap to such a degree that members often do not talk about one without mentioning the other. Green’s decision to commit to IU helped spark that era, one of the most dominant in the program’s history.

“It worked out for me,” Green said. “I never have for very long sat back and said, ‘Gosh, if only I’d have gone to (a different school).’ I never saw myself any place else after that.”

Follow IndyStar reporter Zach Osterman on Twitter: @ZachOsterman.

NEWS

The International Pilgrim Virgin Statue of Fatima stops this Sunday at the St. Paul Campus of John Paul II Catholic Church at 216 Schellers Avenue in Sellersburg as part of its 21-month tour of America in honor of the 100th anniversary of the apparitions of Mary at Fatima in Portugal.

Running through December 20, 2017, the statue is travelling across the country, making daylong stops in diocese along the way.

“The statue is beautiful. You’re never seen a more beautiful face,” said Phyllis Burkholder, event organizer for the church. She and her husband came across the statue on a trip to New Jersey last year. “I found out it was coming to Indianapolis so I called and asked if we could have it for a day.”

The statue’s day at the church begins with a processional by the Knights of Columbus at 9 a.m.

“The K of C will process her in and Our Lady will be crowned,” Burkholder said. “This will be followed by a Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a prayer of consecration.”

The 11:15 a.m. Mass will be followed by a brief talk by the statue’s keeper, Patrick Sabat. A choir concert at 2 p.m. will be followed by a much longer talk from Sabat and followed up at 3:10 p.m. by a Chaplet of Divine Mercy. A Living Rosary is planned for 3:30 p.m. with participants placing a rose in a vase at the statue’s feet.

When not on tour, the statue of Our Lady of Fatima is housed at the World Apostolate of Fatima Blue Army Shrine in Asbury, New Jersey. It is one of two twin sculptures created in 1947 by Jose Thedim.

The image was made based on the description of Lucia, one of three shepherd children who were visited by Mary, the mother of Jesus, six times from May through October, 1917 in Fatima, Portugal.

“She asked them to pray the rosary every day,” Burkholder said. “People came and in October when she appeared there were 70,000 people there who had walked in from all over.”

According to their website, the purpose of the Pilgrim Virgin Statue tours is “to bring the graces of Fatima and Our Lady’s message of hope, peace and salvation to those many millions of people who may never have an opportunity to make a pilgrimage to Fatima itself.”

The Blue Army website quotes Pope Pius XII as saying, “In 1946, I crowned Our Lady of Fatima as Queen of the World and the following year, through the Pilgrim Virgin, she set forth as though to claim her dominion, and the favors she performs along the way are such that we can hardly believe what we are seeing with our eyes.”

“We need her more today than we ever have,” Burkholder said. “It’s like our world has kind of turned upside down because we’re not listening to what we have been warned against. The thing that she’s asked us is that we pray the daily rosary. Prayer helps.”

If You Go:Travelling Statue of Our Lady of FatimaSt. John Paul II Catholic ChurchSt. Paul Campus216 Schellers Ave., SellersburgSunday 9 – 5

INDIANA MEN’S BASKETBALL

Editor’s note: This is the first of a series talking with former IU basketball players and asking them to recall why they picked the Hoosiers during their recruitment.

BLOOMINGTON — There was one good restaurant on the road between Sellersburg and Jeffersonville in 1970. Steve Green knew it well.

A standout basketball player at Silver Creek High School in Sellersburg, Green had been so excited when he received his first college recruiting questionnaire as a sophomore that he returned it immediately. It didn’t matter to him where Mars Hill College was — he was interested.

But by the fall of his senior year, Mars Hill had been dwarfed by the big boys: Auburn, Vanderbilt, Florida, Kentucky. Green had always wanted to go to IU, but in those days, before ESPN, southern Indiana was as much SEC country as it was the Big Ten’s backyard.

One of Green’s chief rivals was Mike Flynn, a guard from Jeffersonville who wound up in Lexington, was getting interest from a lot of the same schools. So much so, in fact, that coaches would see them both on a swing through the area. With recruiting rules more lax in those days — in particular the rules about how often you could take a player out to dinner — Green and Flynn made sure to introduce all their suitors to the best meal around.

“There was one nice place. Mike and I both knew it,” Green said. “There were literally times he’d be with the coach from Florida, and I’d be with a coach from Vanderbilt, or Auburn, and then next night, we’d be there again. They’d switch.”

Green’s place in IU lore now is well-established. The first recruit to commit to Bob Knight after Knight left Army for Indiana, Green became a cornerstone of Knight’s early teams.

He wasn’t always destined for Bloomington. He’d dreamed of playing for IU, where his uncle was a professor and his aunt was a counselor. But the program wasn’t on sure footing then.

And Green himself needed a breakout moment. It came in his sophomore season, against one of the legendary teams in Indiana high school basketball history,

“Our sophomore year, ’69, we made it all the way to semistate, single class, played at Hinkle against George (McGinnis)’s team,” Green said. “All I have to say to people is George’s team in ’69, and they go ‘Oh yeah.’”

McGinnis and Steve Downing, who would both eventually attend IU as well, led Indianapolis Washington to a perfect 31-0 record that season, and a state title. McGinnis set a state tournament scoring record in the process.

Silver Creek fell victim to Washington’s dominance, but earned attention in the process.

“We got noticed by the Indianapolis press. Little Silver Creek, southern Indiana,” Green said. “For us, making it to Indianapolis was a huge deal on so many levels.”

From there, Green’s recruitment expanded quickly. Mars Hill’s questionnaire was replaced by assistants and head coaches in the stands for games and practices. With no AAU basketball in the summer, coaches did most of their recruiting back then through the high school season.

“By the time I was a senior, we had coaches at every game,” Green said. “No disrespect if you’re a Mars Hill grad, but they weren’t from Mars Hill anymore. Big Big Ten, big SEC (presence).”

Green kept his recruitment open through his senior year.

On a visit to Duke, he saw a group of long-haired musicians at a hotel pool he only later realized were the Moody Blues. During a trip to Kentucky, a local businessman who would be Green’s community sponsor if he came to UK showed his parents where he’d keep his car while on campus.

“My dad just right on cue, like a great straight man, ‘Steve doesn’t have a car,’” Green said, laughing, “and the guy doesn’t miss a beat, ‘Where he’ll keep his car.’”

But he hadn’t committed by the end of his senior season, and his affection for IU hadn’t abated.

Green grew up attending Branch McCracken’s summer camps. He idolized the Van Arsdale twins. Knight convinced Green to visit for Little 500 weekend. He stayed at the Sigma Nu house.

“I won’t tell the coaches,” Green recalled saying to himself, “but this I can see myself doing a little bit!”

Ultimately, Knight made the difference. Green signed on.

“There was something about him, about his vision,” Green said, “and very honestly, it allowed me to live the dream I had when I was eight years old. I’d heard all these IU stories from Branch McCracken, Walt Bellamy, Bobby Leonard, Jimmy Rayl, the Vans — I want to be one of those guys.”

The freshman ineligibility rule still existed then, so Green didn’t play until 1972. From there, he became a cornerstone of Knight’s early success at IU, which included four-straight Big Ten titles, two Final Four appearances and a national title in 1976.

That 1976 team remains the last to go undefeated across the course of an entire college basketball season, but even some members of that team will contend the Hoosiers were better in 1975, Green’s senior year. They went 31-1 that season, losing to Kentucky in the Elite Eight with star forward Scott May hampered by injury.

Falling just short of perfection in 1975 motivated Indiana to finish the job the next season, even without Green and the other members of Knight’s first full recruiting class. Today, the two teams overlap to such a degree that members often do not talk about one without mentioning the other. Green’s decision to commit to IU helped spark that era, one of the most dominant in the program’s history.

“It worked out for me,” Green said. “I never have for very long sat back and said, ‘Gosh, if only I’d have gone to (a different school).’ I never saw myself any place else after that.”