|
|
|
|
Home
Select a Conference to view Teams:
Information about College Basketball
The origins of college basketball in the United States predate the creation of its familiar governing body. The first college basketball game took place in February 9, 1895 between the Minnesota State School of Agriculture and Hamline College, a 9-3 victory for the Minnesota State School of Agriculture. The first game where teams were restricted to five players a side was the 15-12 victory by the University of Chicago over the University of Iowa on January 18, 1896. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was founded in 1906 in Chicago to oversee all aspects of collegiate sports. NCAA officials organized the first Men's College Basketball Championship in 1939 in Evanston, Illinois. The 1939 tournament culminated in a 46-33 victory by Oregon over Ohio State.
Read More...
The great debate in the early days of men's college basketball revolved around the best way to crown a champion each season. The NCAA Tournament was restricted to conference champions from Pacific to Atlantic, allowing small-conference victors to face off against well-known schools like Kansas and Kentucky. The National Invitational Tournament (NIT) was founded in 1938 by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association to solve this problem. From 1938 into the early 1950s, the victor of the NIT was considered the national champion in men's basketball. The legitimacy of the NIT was based on its acceptance of at-large bids from major conferences, its culmination in Madison Square Garden, and the NCAA's segregation of white and black schools.
The modern NCAA Men's Championship has emerged from this challenge by the NIT. The NCAA tinkered with the tournament format in the early 1950s to ensure that its champion would be considered the best team in the country. The tournament began accepting at-large bids to attract great teams from the major conferences, neutralizing a major argument by the NIT for its legitimacy. The NCAA adapted its seeding system to allow top seeds to play close to home even if they were playing at neutral sites. By the mid-1950s, the NIT had become the tournament of successful mid-major colleges and underperforming majors that could not land spots in the NCAA tournament.
The men's tournament, often referred to as March Madness, has expanded from its original eight-team format in 1939. The NCAA allowed 16 teams into the tournament by 1952, 22 to 25 teams between 1953 and 1974, 32 teams by 1978, and a steady expansion from 48 in 1980 to 65 in 2001. The 64th and 65th teams into the tournament each year are required to participate in a play-in game, requiring minor conference champions to win a game before playing a number one seed.
College basketball teams start each season with preseason camps starting with Midnight Madness events in October. These events start at 12:01am on the first day that the NCAA allows preseason practice each year. Prominent schools like North Carolina, Duke, Texas, and Stanford invite fans to watch practice, participate in raffles, and meet with their favorite players before the season starts. Tickets to Midnight Madness events are sold through box offices at individual schools as well as ticket offices in the athletic department.
Every college basketball team participates in exhibition games, preseason tournaments, and non-conference games from November to January each season. Exhibition games typically take place between Division I schools, all-star teams, and regional Division II or Division III schools. Universities host tournaments at their arenas to draw in fans, play teams that would not normally be on their schedules, and gain fan support early in the season. The ultimate preseason tournament is the Preseason NIT, an invitational event in November that asks highly ranked teams to compete well before the conference season begins. The non-conference schedule of a school like Marquette is drawn up based on agreements with schools to play home-and-home series. These agreements are beneficial to small universities that get paid well for traveling to higher-ranked opponents because of the low likelihood of an upset.
College basketball teams advance from non-conference games to conference games, conference tournaments, and the NCAA tournament. The conference schedule may require a team to play a home and away game against each conference member, or play certain schools each year in the case of a large conference like the Big East. The winners of conference tournaments are assured of guaranteed bids in the NCAA Tournament, forcing their opponents to wait impatiently as the NCAA Tournament Committee chooses their at-large bids. While tournament tickets are sold through tournament venues as well as individual teams, websites like StubHub and eBay may have better seats available at premium prices.
The future of college basketball may rest on potential changes in the tournament, the three-point line, and the possession arrow. Former coach Bobby Knight and others have called for expansions in the tournament to allow spurned at-large teams chances to compete with conference champions. The three-point line was moved back a foot in 2007 to 20 feet 9 inches, which may become an issue if the NBA changes its line at some point. The NCAA introduced the possession arrow in 1981 in lieu of jump balls to create an impartial method of determining possession when two players hold the ball.
Close...
|
