NAIA Men's Basketball Championships
The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Men's Basketball National Championship has been held annually since 1937 (with the exception of 1944). The tournament was established by James Naismith to crown a national champion for smaller colleges and universities. The NAIA Tournament features only 32 teams, and the entire tournament is contested in one week instead of three weekends. Since 1992, the NAIA has sponsored a Division II championship. Also the entire tournament is played in one city (Kansas City, Missouri DI, and Point Lookout, Missouri DII). Contracts for both cities will expire after 2010, requiring renewal or selection of a new host city.
The only school to have won national titles in both the NAIA and NCAA Division I is Louisville. Southern Illinois has won NAIA and NIT titles. Central Missouri and Fort Hays State have won NAIA and NCAA Division II national titles. Curiously, Indiana State has finished as the National Runner-up in the NAIA (1946 and 1948), the NCAA Division I (1979) and the NCAA Division II (1968) tournaments. Indiana State won the NAIA in 1950.
In 1948, the NAIB became the first national organization to open their intercollegiate postseason to black student-athletes; due, primarily, to the influence of Indiana State coach John Wooden. In 1947, Coach Wooden refused the invitation to the NAIA National Tournament. The following year, Coach Wooden brought the first African-American student athlete (Clarence Walker) to play at the national tournament. Walker, a vital role player helped the Sycamores finish as the NAIA National Finalist.
The tournament MVP has been presented with the Chuck Taylor Most Valuable Player award since 1939.
Read more about NAIA Men's Basketball Championships: Division I, Division II
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or basketball:
“Old men feel a slightly reluctant affection for one another.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)