Mouse House continues to churn out family-friendly inspirational sports films that will certainly touch a nerve with audiences.

Walt Disney Studios has enjoyed luck mining this genre for the likes of "The Greatest Game Ever Played," "The Rookie" and "Remember the Titans." "Glory Road" shares more with the latter than the other two, because like that one it deals with a pressing issue — racism.

"Glory Road" follows the story of Texas Western (now the University of Texas at El Paso) basketball coach Don Haskins (Josh Lucas of "Stealth" and "An Unfinished Life") and how he took a bunch of African-American basketball players — who were still somewhat of an anomaly in Southern college sports — and molded them into a national championship team, much to the shock of the rest of the establishment.

It's almost like two movies in that we're presented a humorous, almost fluffy look at how Haskins assembles his squad from players from Gary, Ind., and the outdoor courts of New York City, only for them to have to deal with the stark realities of what it means to have seven black basketball players on a NCAA Division 1-A team.

"Glory Road" doesn't sugarcoat what the team has to deal with from outsiders. An attack of one player, who has his head dunked in a toilet filled with an attacker's urine, is presented in great detail, as is the vandalism of the players' hotel rooms on one road trip.

But while writer Chris Cleveland willingly deals with the overt racism and bigotry that takes place outside of the school's confines, with the exception of one athletic booster who seems particularly queasy about having so many of "them" around, the movie doesn't deal with that issue which given the time frame — 1966 — logically must have existed at the school itself. In that era, it's a bit disingenuous to believe that seven basketball players didn't have to endure racially motivated animosity on a college campus in Southwestern Texas.

You can understand why Cleveland and director James Gartner do this. It allows them to set up an us-versus-the-world scenario that will make the audience invest more emotionally in the story and it works because, for the most part, "Glory Road" is hard to resist.

Gartner takes those story elements and blends it with convincing basketball play to create a feel-good movie, enough so that you can forget those incongruities. It also helps that Lucas gives a performance laced with charm, humor and a hard-nosed attitude.

Haskins, a girls' basketball coach, arrives at Texas Western only to discover a lack of a budget and the inability to compete with some of the nation's premier hoops programs.

His first problem: He's in Texas, where football rules. His second: who wants to go live and play in the middle of nowhere? He takes what is then a drastic step — he recruits black players and gives them the opportunity to play.

Of course, he and his recruits have to listen to the same condescending and asinine questions about intelligence and the ability to work as a team. A record of 27-1 and a national championship in which Haskins eventually plays a seven-man rotation of only the black players answer those questions.

Could "Glory Road" have offered more in the way of exploring the social issues of the time with a more balanced perspective? Certainly. However, at least the issue is explored and in a way that entertains without being heavy-handed. You can't ask for more than that.