The Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame announced the 2018 class earlier this week.

One of the newest members of the Hall is longtime basketball coach Steve Brett.

“I knew early when I was a 4’9″ 92 pound freshman, I wasn’t going to make the NBA.”

So that’s when the kid from Loogootee decided his future would entail coaching. Steve Brett played high school basketball with the Lions under Jack Butcher, the state’s all time winningest coach. He then played at Indiana State. After ISU, Brett jumped into coaching, getting his start on Gunner Wyman’s staff at Vincennes Lincoln, the same place he’s at today.

“It’s all i really thought about doing really,” Steve Brett said about coaching.

Little did he know he’d embark on an Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame career. 37 years as a head coach with stops at Bloomfield, Seymour, Loogootee, and Shakamak. His tenure features 11 sectional championships, a state finals appearance in 2005 with Loogootee, and 467 victories.

“Coaching was never work to me. You never though about those kinds of things. The thing you thought about was getting your team ready for sectionals, get them to perform as best they could in tournament play and I just loved being in the gym,” added the 2018 Hall of Fame Inductee.

Since his career started in 1978, the game of basketball has changed. Steve Brett has seen the implementation of the three point line, numerous rule changes and players growing more and more talented. But the biggest difference is how technology has impacted the game.

“We had a good rivalry, Bloomfield, with Shakamak and one year they told me I should’ve had a season ticket, I kept going over there so much to scout. You don’t have to do that as much. You still scout and want to see them. But you can get film and stuff and it’s a lot more available than it used to be.

After calling it quits, Coach Brett stepped away from coaching for one season.

“My wife will testify that we both about went nuts that year. I was going to games all the time but I wasn’t in the gym every day after school.

So when Josh Thompson, a Bloomfield graduate who grew up admiring Coach Brett, took over the Alices basketball program in 2016, he thought of the legendary coach, who after all gave Thompson a job on his coaching staff with Loogootee.

“The kids are fortunate but I’m also fortunate to go to him. Outside of the 467 wins, trip to state finals in ’05 and other successes he’s had in the game, it’s the fact that he gives back and makes the game better all of the time,” Thompson said.

And now Coach Thompson’s staff includes a hall of famer: Steve Brett.

“Certainly gratifying and probably the most pleasing part about that is it’s voted on by my coaching peers,” added Brett.

Brett and the other members of the 2018 Hall of Fame class will officially be inducted on March 21, 2018 at the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame’s 57^th Annual Men’s Awards Banquet.