RAISOR ON ESPN FEB. 21

Phil Raisor, associate professor of English at Old Dominion University, will be featured on an ESPN Classic program Saturday, Feb. 21, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the now-legendary high school basketball game in which he played.

The '54 Indiana state basketball championship pitted Muncie Central � with Raisor starting at guard � against tiny Milan, the ultimate victor, in a classic David-versus-Goliath matchup that inspired the film "Hoosiers."

The ESPN Classic program, "The Big Ticket," will broadcast archival footage and audio of the game with running commentary by Raisor and Milan's Bobby Plump from 6-7:30 p.m., with a rebroadcast scheduled from 9:30-11 p.m. From 7:30-9:30 p.m., the channel will broadcast a game between the two schools' current teams live from Muncie, Ind.

ESPN Classic can be seen on Cox Digital Cable channel 230.

Raisor is the author of the 2003 book "Outside Shooter," which chronicles that historic game and his coming-of-age in the 1950s.

After his career at Muncie Central, Raisor received a basketball scholarship at the University of Kansas, where as a freshman he watched his Wilt Chamberlain-led Jayhawks lose the 1957 NCAA championship in triple overtime to North Carolina.

A member of the ODU faculty since 1969, Raisor teaches courses in 20th-Century American, British and world poetry, fiction and drama, as well as the craft of poetry and the works of Joyce, Faulkner, O'Casey, Yeats and Snodgrass.