Net Fans in State Await Whistle to Start Great Derby

From The Indianapolis Star, Friday, February 29, 1924:  The shrill blast of the referee’s whistle will be the signal today for the start of Indiana’s great basketball derby.  In fifty-two playing centers the lithe forms of scores of sterling athletes, trained to the minute after weeks of preparation and careful coaching, will leap into the air for the advantage of the tipoff, and the annual thriller for the interscholastic hardwood championship of the Hoosier state will be underway in all its fervor.  Representatives of exactly 665 institutions carrying the hopes and fears of their constituents will race up and down the floor striving for the upper hand in various elimination rounds for two days to determine the first-round tournament winners.  One by one these will drop, until fifty-two undefeated quintets will remain as the outstanding performers of the original field.