During the game when Everett Flatch cuts his shoulder open, he can be
seen on the court after Coach Dale benches him.
During the game where Coach Dale gets thrown out on purpose and
eaves Shooter in charge, Shooter calls a defensive play for Buddy to
fill the lane and cut off a pass. When play resumes, Jimmy intercepts
the pass. After the scene cuts to Shooter calling for time out, it cuts
back to the game but now Buddy has the ball and is also signaling
for time out.
During the first practice, after Coach Dale dismisses two players from
the team, there are some drills with five players, then a two man passing
drill with six players, followed by a drill with five players again.
During the championship game, the radio announcer says that the score
is tied at 30. Without any subsequent action, the scoreboard shows the
score to be tied at 40. This is because the game was filmed exactly as
the real championship game between Milan and Muncie Central (tied at 30,
Milan won 32-30 when Bobby Plump scored at the end) but the producers
decided afterwards to re-shoot the scoreboard to make it look more
high-scoring.
Once the tournament has begun, Coach Dale and Myra go for a walk in the
woods. As they are walking, fall harvest corn appears to be visible in the
background, but the tournament is played in March. The corn has been picked.
The tassels and ears are gone, however the corn stalks aren't mashed to ground
the way modern harvesters leave them. This is more in the style that corn was
left after picking 50 years ago.
Established etiquette for displaying the United States flag when hung vertically
is to have the blue union on the uppermost left - several times in the movie it
appears with the union on the upper right.
When Coach Dale first arrives in the principal's office, his tie is alternately
neat/untidy between shots.
In the basketball scenes at the State Finals, the edges of the backboards
are padded. Backboard padding wasn't added until years after the movie setting.
In the high school pep rally, the shot of the sousaphone player shows him
using a Conn (brand) mouth piece, the design of which wasn't made
until the 1970s.
In the final game with the score 16-8, Jimmy scores a basket (making
the score 16-10) and the scoreboard reads period "2". When Jimmy scores
again seconds later, you can see the scoreboard reads period "1".
Glass backboards didn't come into use at the high school level until the 1970s.
The final game depicts a scoreboard more electronic than the mechanical
clocks and numerical flip-cards used in the 1950s.
The score features a Roland TR-707 drum machine prominently, but the drum
machine as a stand-alone instrument wasn't invented until 1980, and the
TR-707 was first sold in 1984.
In the Hickory Gym, you can clearly see where they pulled up the tape of the
modern free throw lane to make a 1950s-style lane.
In the first practice, Buddy and Whit both quit the team. Soon after, Coach Dale
allows Whit to rejoin the team at the request of Whit and his father. But later in the
season and through the tournament, Buddy is also playing on the team, even though
he was never showed rejoining the team. A deleted scene with Buddy rejoining the
team was cut to reduce the film's running time.
During the championship game, footage (although shown at a slightly different angle)
of the same alley-oop layup made by Jimmy Chitwood is shown on two separate
occasions. The first instance occurs with about 4:00 left in the game (as seen on the
scoreboard a play or two after the shot in question) and the second, identical shot
occurs after a steal by Walker (#14 on Hickory) and makes the score South Bend
40, Hickory 38.
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