 | |||||
| Season | 1978–79 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teams | 40 | ||||
| Finals site | Special Events Center Salt Lake City, Utah | ||||
| Champions | Michigan State Spartans (1st title, 1st title game, 2nd Final Four) | ||||
| Runner-up | Indiana State Sycamores (1st title game, 1st Final Four) | ||||
| Semifinalists |
| ||||
| Winning coach | Jud Heathcote (1st title) | ||||
| MOP | Magic Johnson (Michigan State) | ||||
| Attendance | 262,101 | ||||
| Top scorer | Tony Price (Penn) (142 points) | ||||
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The 1979 NCAA Division I basketball tournament involved 40 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 9 and ended with the championship game on March 26 in Salt Lake City. A total of 40 games were played, including a national third-place game. This was the tournament's only edition with forty teams; the previous year's had 32,[1] and it expanded to 48 in 1980. The 1979 Indiana State team was the last squad to reach a national title game with an undefeated record for 42 years; their achievement was finally matched by the 2021 Gonzaga Bulldogs, who reached that year's title contest against Baylor with a 31-0 record.
Michigan State, coached by Jud Heathcote, won the national title with a 75–64 victory in the final game over Indiana State, coached by Bill Hodges.[2] Indiana State came into the game undefeated, but could not extend their winning streak. Magic Johnson of Michigan State was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.[3][4] Michigan State's victory over Indiana State was its first over a top-ranked team, and remained its only victory over a number one ranked team until 2007 (Wisconsin).[5]
The final game marked the beginning of the rivalry between future Hall of Famers Johnson and Larry Bird. As of 2021, it remains the highest-rated game in the history of televised college basketball.[6][7] Both Johnson and Bird would enter the NBA in the fall of 1979, and the rivalry between them and their teams (respectively, the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics) was a major factor in the league's renaissance in the 1980s and 1990s. The game also led to the "modern era" of college basketball, as it introduced a nationwide audience to a sport that was once relegated to second-class status in the sports world. This was also the first tournament where unique logos for the event were introduced, creating a diversity of branding which lasts to the present day.
With the loss in the championship game, Indiana State has finished as the national runner-up in the NAIA (1946, 1948), NCAA Division II (1968), and NCAA Division I (1979) tournaments, making them the only school to do so.
This was the first tournament in which all teams were seeded by the Division I Basketball Committee.[1] The top six seeds in each regional received byes to the second round, while seeds 7–10 played in the first round.
It is also notable as the last Final Four played in an on-campus arena, at the University of Utah. (The most recent tournament to be held on a university's premises (i.e. not on the university's main campus, but on a satellite or branch campus) was in 1983, as the University of New Mexico (UNM) hosted that year's tournament in The Pit (then officially known as University Arena), which is located on the UNM South Campus.) It has, however, been played in a team's regular off-campus home arena three times since then: in 1985 at Rupp Arena, Kentucky's home court, in 1994 at Charlotte Coliseum, UNCC’s home court, and in 1996 at Continental Airlines Arena, then Seton Hall's home court. Given the use of domed stadiums for Final Fours for the foreseeable future, it is likely this will be the last Final Four on a college campus. This tournament was the last until the 2019 tournament to see two finalists playing for the national championship for the first time. The 1979 Final Four was the first in which all four schools came from east of the Mississippi River.
This was the first NCAA tournament where three officials were assigned to all games. Several conferences, including the Big Ten and Southeastern, used three officials for its regular season games prior to the NCAA adopting it universally.
