The Final Four: The Pursuit of College Basketball Glory
There should be little surprise that a game played in the basement of a science building didn’t look much like the modern sport The teams played with nine players on each side and shot at peach baskets hung on the walls Even the final score a 9 3 victory for the visiting team would seem much too low to modern fans Yet a college tradition was born that day It wouldn’t take long before college basketball moved out of the basement and into the big time EVOLVING GAME Basketball rapidly grew in popularity Less than a year after that first college game in Minnesota the University of Iowa invited players from the University of Chicago for a contest This game looked a bit more like the sport fans love today It featured five players on each side and the scores actually reached double digits a 15 12 victory for Chicago Over the decades college basketball continued to grow Conferences emerged especially in the eastern United States and the rules evolved Still the game’s following could not match that of college football The shot clock had not yet been added to college basketball so teams could hold on to the ball as long as they liked without shooting To many fans the action was simply too slow and the scores too low THE 1904 OLYMPICS By the early 1900s basketball was getting worldwide notice It was added to the 1904 Olympic Games in St Louis Missouri Olympic officials invited top college teams to compete in a championship tournament Hiram College located in Hiram Ohio won the Olympic Intercollegiate World Championship 8 THE FINAL FOUR
While the lack of a shot clock contributed to low-scoring games what really held the game back was the style of play Players used two hands and kept both feet on the ground while shooting The shot was easy to defend and scoring was difficult This style led to many dull plodding contests In 1936 Stanford player Hank Luisetti thrilled fans and annoyed defenders with something that would change the game forever the one-handed jump shot Basketball historians agree that Luisetti wasn’t the first to attempt such a shot But he used it so well and with such flair that other players had no choice but to perfect it themselves Almost overnight the game changed It became faster more focused on scoring and more thrilling Hank Luisetti helped popularize basketball with his exciting style of play From the Basement to the Big Time 9
THE TOURNAMENT ERA BEGINS The dawn of the jump shot had changed the face of college basketball But the sport still had one nagging problem At season’s end fans had conference champions to celebrate but no real national champ In 1938 the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association in New York City had a solution They came up with an invitation-only tournament featuring the best teams in the country to determine once and for all who was No 1 The National Invitation Tournament NIT was born A committee selected six teams to participate in the first NIT to be held annually at Madison Square Garden in New York City Temple defeated Colorado 60 36 to claim the first NIT title In 1959 Hank Luisetti left was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame 10 THE FINAL FOUR
The NCAA was not far behind The organization had formed in 1906 to reform college football which at the time had been a brutal and sometimes deadly sport In the decades since the NCAA had taken over as a governing body for all major college athletics In 1939 a year after the NIT had formed the NCAA introduced a men’s basketball tournament of its own That first NCAA tournament featured eight teams One champion was selected from each of eight regions After the opening round of games the first semifinal round was set Oregon Oklahoma Villanova and Ohio State Then in the title game Oregon beat Ohio State 46 33 to become the first NCAA champion The NCAA had its champion but which team was best in the country Though Oregon won the NCAA tournament in 1939 Long Island defeated Loyola to win the NIT In those early years the top teams were often invited to both tournaments and had to choose one or the other The NIT played in New York City was often the first choice Over the next few years some teams competed in both tournaments but rarely with success In 1940 Colorado won the NIT but lost in the early rounds of the NCAA Then in 1944 Utah was the NCAA champ but lost in the opening round of the NIT THE FATE OF THE NIT The NIT remained an important tournament through the end of the 1950s But as the NCAA tournament field grew and the balance of college basketball power shifted west to teams such as UCLA the New York based NIT became an afterthought By the 1970s many fans and players joked about the other tournament Some said that NIT really stood for Not Invited Tournament or Nobody’s Interested Tournament However the NIT is still played each season giving smaller schools and young rising teams a chance to taste postseason action
