March Madness, men’s college basketball NCAA Division I national championship playoffs, begin Tuesday.

Millions of us played youth and pick-up basketball yet seldom watch college basketball games — but do tune in to watch the much hyped and often thrilling end of season March Madness.

More than $10 billion will be bet on these games over the next three weeks. Many will be watching standout teams from Kansas, UConn, Purdue, Houston and Arizona. But just as many of us will be rooting for “Cinderella teams” to emerge and provide underdog upset heroics.

The idea of Cinderella teams is developed in the much beloved Hollywood movie “Hoosiers” starring the late Gene Hackman. Hackman acts the role of Hickory, Ind., High School coach Norman Dale.

This was a 1986 low-budget movie based on a small-town southern Indiana 1954 men’s team that against great odds won their state championship.

“Hoosiers” is regularly rated among the best loved sports movies — up there with “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham,” “Rocky” and “Chariots of Fire.”

Actor Gene Hackman died last month at 95 in Santa Fe, N.M. He acted in more than 80 feature films. He was raised in the central Illinois town of Danville. His father left the family when he was 13 and Hackman joined the Marines for a nearly five-year career when he was 16. He mostly served in Japan and South Korea.

He was a college dropout but went west to study at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, Calif. That didn’t work as he was thrown out for lacking acting talent. Dustin Hoffman was a fellow student.

Hackman persevered and went on to win two Oscars and countless other awards, starring in films such as “The French Connection,” “Unforgiven,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “Mississippi Burning” and “Runaway Jury.”

Hackman won no awards for his coaching in “Hoosiers,” but it was a memorable role in a heartwarming and triple Cinderella story.

Coach Dale is a complicated, taciturn fellow with a checkered past. We learn that he was banned from coaching back east because he hit one of his players. He joined the Navy and somehow manages to earn a second chance at coaching because of a favor from an old college friend.

Indiana is a famously basketball-crazy state, and locals think they know how the game should be played. Hackman is not well-received, in part, because he has a different style and in part because he is an outsider.

The best player is sitting the season out for personal reasons. Only six or seven players are available to play and a couple of them threatened to quit on this demanding new coach.

On a few occasions, the coach must send in the student equipment manager (or towel boy) to play to have five players on the floor. It is an unlikely crew with dim prospects.

Yet another Cinderella theme in “Hoosiers” occurs when Hackman persuades one of his player’s dads to join him as an assistant coach. The challenge is that the dad is an alcoholic. Hackman gets the dad, wonderfully played by the actor Dennis Hopper, to promise to be sober and be on time, etc. And this happens and he helps out until a hugely embarrassing relapse occurs. The dad is ejected and institutionalized.

Fortunately, that best player in town joins the team just about the time that the community is set on firing “Coach” Hackman. Things go better. The team keeps winning and the coach’s discipline and team-building efforts seem to be working. The Hickory Huskers keep on winning games in their improbable streak. At one joyful point, the towel-boy makes two triumphal foul shots.

They are a tiny school. They are decidedly short of players. They have skeptic local fans. They have a coach who occasionally loses his temper and gets ejected. It is an unlikely story — but the team keeps winning.

They make it to the finals and are pitted against a much taller and more talented South Bend, Ind., team. But coach instills confidence in them, makes adjustments, and his players improvise — even overriding their demanding coach as they decide on their own strategies in the final moments.

And, of course, they win. The movie doesn’t try to glorify the coach or any single player. It is a victory for the underdog — it is a Cinderella story to top all others. And we all enjoy a happy ending.

Those who haven’t seen the movie should, even though I have disclosed the ending. It will make some viewers cry. It captures Americana in the mid-1950s. And it is a tribute to Gene Hackman and good coaches everywhere.

March Madness and “Hoosiers” reminds us of legendary coaches such as John Wooden of UCLA and Bobby Knight of Indiana and, more recently of Mike Krzyzewski (Coach K) of Duke University.

Coloradans should know that Coach K began his coaching career here at Fort Carson, where he was first stationed as an artillery officer after graduating from West Point. He had captained his West Point team coached by Bobby Knight. He coached his Carson team to military league championships.

But Coach K is best known for his remarkable 42-year tenure as the men’s head basketball coach at Duke University. He won more than 1,200 games — the most wins of any coach at a single university at the Division I level. His teams won five NCAA championships. His players included Grant Hill, Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Kyrie Irving, J.J. Redick, Zion Williamson and Jason Tatum, among dozens of other all-star caliber players. He also won three Olympic gold medals for helping Team USA in 2008, 2012 and 2016.

Coach K had genius for nurturing team work and bring out the best in his players. He has shared his coaching strategies in a couple of best-selling books including one I recommend called “Leading with the Heart” (NY: Grand Central, 2000 and 2023). It shares ideas that made him a giant and may have worked for Hackman, as well.

“You develop a team to achieve what one person cannot accomplish alone. All of us alone are weaker by far, than if all of us work together.”

“Sometimes adversity can work in your favor. Instead of feeling sorry for yourself and using it as an excuse, accept the situation and try to make the most of it. That’s how a team develops resilience and character.”

“It’s important to remember that every person is different and has to be motivated differently.”

Coach K also shares wonderful highlights from his March Madness experiences. His book is worth reading along with watching “Hoosiers.” Leadership, he emphasizes, like basketball, is a game of adjustments. So true.

Three cheers for Gene Hackman, Coach K and March Madness.