NCAA Tournament Lines at LinesMaker

NCAA Tournament Lines

NCAA Tour­na­ment Lines Deter­mine the National Bas­ket Ball Cham­pion
Cur­rently the NCAA tour­na­ment lines deter­mine the national bas­ket­ball cham­pion; how­ever, this has not always been the case. Until the 1950s the NIT was largely con­sid­ered to be the more pres­ti­gious tour­na­ment. The NCAA had only been around since 1939 and was still rel­a­tively new in the world of bas­ket­ball. As a result, teams often chose to enter the NIT and ignore the NCAA tour­na­ment lines alto­gether. In some cases; how­ever, teams chose to enter both tour­neys and some even walked away with both national tour­na­ment cham­pi­onships. This was the case of City Col­lege of New York, who entered and one both tour­na­ments in 1950. In other cases, it was not unknown for a team to enter both tour­na­ments; lose in one and win in the other. Utah man­aged to pull off such a feat in 1944 when they lost dur­ing the first round of the NIT but went on to win the NCAA cham­pi­onship. Ken­tucky fol­lowed up with a sim­i­lar pat­tern in 1949.
While today the NCAA tour­na­ment lines serve as a sin­gle elim­i­na­tion event, a third place game was added into the sched­ule in 1941 by the East region. A national third place game as added for the first time in 1946 and remained as a per­ma­nent fix­ture in the NCAA cham­pi­onship until 1980.
The tour­na­ment was expanded to include 16 teams in 1951, with fur­ther divi­sions occur­ring five years later when the tour­na­ment was expanded to include four regions. The 1970s saw fur­ther devel­op­ments. In 1975 the tour­na­ment was expanded to 32 teams. Eight more teams were added in 1979. That year teams were also seeded for the first time. As Magic Johns lead Michi­gan State over Larry Bird and Indi­ana to win the national cham­pi­onship, the NCAA tour­na­ment lines began to draw atten­tion from around the coun­try. Today, the tour­na­ment remains highly popular.

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• Col­lege Bas­ket­ball Round Up

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