Henry Steele, a naive high school basketball star from a small town in Colorado, wins a college scholarship to Western University in Los Angeles.

Talented but with a tendency to improvise, Henry must overcome not only a cultural transition, but also adopt to the team's win-at-all-costs philosophy from his coach, which includes a strict system fraught with corruption.

Defying orders, Henry leads the team's comeback, makes the game-winning shot and is carried off the court on other players' shoulders.

The film's director, Lamont Johnson, appears briefly as an alumni sponsor, part of a sub-plot regarding a win-at-all-costs corruption in the school's athletic programs.

A lot of the success of the 'how' in 'One on One' has to do with the performance by writer-actor Benson, whose clean-cut naïveté masks a surprising moral strength, which, even if it's not very common, is something we'd all like to believe in.

"[12] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called the film "a wobbly attempt at junior division 'Rocky,'" with "fitfully appealing interludes" but "Whenever the mood shifts toward True Romance or pathos, the movie begins to disintegrate.

"[13] Clyde Jeavons of The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the screenwriters "take the easy way out, opting for the old Hollywood winning-through-against-all-odds formula which makes their sporting hero's final rejection of his mentor-cum-tormentor both irrelevant and gratuitous and not in the least the 'surprise' ending that was intended.