NCAA Final Four History

The NCAA Final Four is the culmination of what begins as a 64-team basketball tournament every March. The tournament is divided into four brackets of 16 seeded teams that play each other until only four are left. This Final Four then meets at a predetermined arena to determine the NCAA men's basketball champion. The NCAA tournament has had this format since 1939, when the first Final Four included Oregon, Oklahoma, Ohio State and Villanova.

  1. 1939 through 1960

    • In the early years of the Final Four, the games were played frequently at Madison Square Garden in New York City and Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. The most memorable Final Four from 1939 through 1960 was the 1957 version, which featured San Francisco (without the graduated Bill Russell), North Carolina, and Michigan State along with Kansas and star center Wilt Chamberlain. Kansas mowed down San Francisco and North Carolina handled Michigan State before the two met. The game required three overtimes before it was settled with Carolina edging Kansas by a 54-53 score to complete an undefeated season at 32-0.

    1961 through 1975

    • Cincinnati, with superb grad Oscar Robertson, took back-to-back Final Fours in 1961 and 1962. Bolstered by players such as Keith Wilkes, Lew Alcindor, Bill Walton and Dave Meyers, UCLA, led by Coach John Wooden, dominated the Final Four from 1964 through 1975. UCLA's greatest moment came when Bill Walton scored 44 points in the 1973 title game versus Memphis State on 21 of 22 shooting. North Carolina State upset UCLA the next year in the national semi-final with David Thompson scoring 28 points in a double-overtime thriller. The title game against Marquette was almost anti-climactic as State won 76-64. UCLA took the Final Four the next year as Wooden retired with ten championships in his last dozen seasons.

    1976 through 1990

    • With Wooden gone, UCLA began to slip and a level of parity returned to the Final Four. Indiana and Coach Bobby Knight completed an undefeated campaign in 1976 when they clobbered UCLA and Michigan in Philadelphia. The 1979 Final Four was special as it matched Magic Johnson's Michigan State squad and Larry Bird's unbeaten Indiana State team in the title game. This contest put the Final Four and the NCAA Tournament into the mainstream as Michigan State won handily. Villanova as an eight seed shocked Georgetown and center Patrick Ewing in 1985 while Kansas upset Oklahoma in the 1988 Final Four championship tilt.

    1991 through 1999

    • Duke emerged from the 1991 and 1992 Final Fours victorious but fell to Arkansas in the 1994 version. Kentucky was able to sandwich national championships in 1996 and 1998 around a title game loss to Arizona in overtime in 1997. In the 1999 Final Four, Connecticut took on a Duke team nursing a 32 game winning streak but behind Richard Hamilton came away with the school's first national title in men's basketball, 77-74.

    2000 through 2009

    • Michigan State, Duke, Maryland, Syracuse, Connecticut, North Carolina and Florida each came out of the Final Four with a championship from 2000 through 2006. Florida was able to repeat in 2007 and Kansas won an improbable overtime game against favored Memphis in 2008. In 2009, North Carolina waltzed through Villanova and then Michigan State to win another crown; North Carolina's appearance matched UCLA for the most Final Four trips with 18, which is four more than Duke has.