 NCAA logo from 1971 to 1979 | |||||
| Season | 1977–78 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teams | 32 | ||||
| Finals site | The Checkerdome St. Louis, Missouri | ||||
| Champions | Kentucky Wildcats (5th title, 7th title game, 8th Final Four) | ||||
| Runner-up | Duke Blue Devils (2nd title game, 4th Final Four) | ||||
| Semifinalists |
| ||||
| Winning coach | Joe B. Hall (1st title) | ||||
| MOP | Jack Givens (Kentucky) | ||||
| Attendance | 447,234 | ||||
| Top scorer | Mike Gminski (Duke) (109 points) | ||||
| |||||
The 1978 NCAA Division I basketball tournament involved 32 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 11, 1978, and ended with the championship game on March 27 in St. Louis, Missouri. A total of 32 games were played, including a national third-place game.
The process of seeding the bracket was first used in this tournament. Sixteen conference winners with automatic bids were seeded 1 through 4 in each region. At-large teams were seeded 1 through 4 in each region separately. There were in fact only eleven true at-large teams in the field, as the remaining five were conference winners with automatic bids and seeded as "at-large."[1] The practice of distinguishing between automatic and at-large teams ended with this edition; the expanded field of forty in the 1979 tournament was simply seeded from one to ten in each of the four regions.
Led by head coach Joe B. Hall, Kentucky won its fifth national title with a 94–88 victory over Duke, coached by Bill Foster. Wildcat forward Jack Givens scored 41 points in the finale and was named the tournament's most outstanding player.[2][3][4][5]
The bracket's biggest upset came in the first round, when little-heralded Miami (Ohio) defeated defending champion Marquette 84-81 in overtime. The victory was even sweeter for Miami Redskins (now RedHawks) fans as former Marquette coach Al McGuire had earlier strongly criticized the NCAA for potentially matching Marquette against Kentucky in the second round, with Marquette being given a first-round opponent in Miami that was supposedly not even worthy of providing an adequate tune-up game.
Unranked Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) pulled off two upsets, first over 4th ranked New Mexico (coached by Norm Ellenberger and led by Michael Cooper) and then over top-10 San Francisco (featuring Bill Cartwright). The loss was especially painful for New Mexico as the regional semifinals and finals were held on the Lobos' home court in Albuquerque. CSUF then almost upset Arkansas in the West Regional final, losing by 3 points. In each of the three games, the Titans overcame second-half double-digit deficits. In the Arkansas game, they cut a big deficit to 1 and had the ball with 14 seconds left. But Arkansas' Ron Brewer stripped the ball from Keith Anderson and Jim Counce drove down to hit a clinching layup.
In the Mideast regional final, Kentucky knocked off Michigan State, led by freshman Earvin "Magic" Johnson. This was the only time in a 4-year period (that included his senior year in high school, 2 years of college, and his rookie NBA season) that Magic's team did not win its final game of the playoffs and hence the championship.
The Final Four games (semifinals, third-place, and championship) at St. Louis Arena (a.k.a. The Checkerdome) were not played on the arena's official floor. Water damage to it forced the NCAA to borrow the floor from Indiana University's Assembly Hall in Bloomington.
This was the fourth and last year for a 32-team bracket; the field expanded to forty teams in 1979 and 48 in 1980, all seeded. The 64-team field debuted in 1985, eliminating byes for the top seeds (1979–1984). The third-place game at the Final Four was last played in 1981.
