You pretty much know what you're getting when you walk into a sports movie that bills itself as "an inspirational account ... inspired by a true story."

And with Coach Carter,,you pretty much get that: The story of Ken Carter, the basketball coach at Richmond High School in a tough section of the San Francisco Bay Area, features rousing, crowd-pleasing moments and breathless buzzer-beating action. It's also full of the obligatory speeches about turning athletes into students and turning boys into men.

The difference here is that the person making those speeches is Samuel L. Jackson. He's not threatening to strike down upon anyone with great vengeance and furious anger, as he did so famously in Pulp Fiction. He has dialed down his wrath, but despite his character's overly polite practice of calling everyone ma'am and sir, he's still a formidable presence.

Jackson avoids melodrama - it just isn't part of his repertoire - and director Thomas Carter, who previously directed another MTV movie, Save the Last Dance, for the most part does the same, though he could have trimmed the film by about a half-hour.

The result, like the recent Friday Night Lights and Miracle, is a movie that manages to transcend its predictable, by-the-numbers structure, even though its tough-love themes inevitably will remind you of Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds.