The 1970 NCAA University Division Basketball Tournament involved 25 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division Icollege basketball. It began on March 7, 1970, and ended with the championship game on March 21 in College Park, Maryland. A total of 29 games were played, including a third place game in each region and a national third place game. This tournament was notable for the number of small schools that reached the Sweet 16, Elite 8, Final 4, and Championship Game.
For the second time in five years, Cole Field House and the University of Maryland, College Park were the hosts of the Final Four. Like the previous time Cole was the Final Four site, all the venues used in the tournament were on-campus venues. To date, this is the last time that this has been the case. The tournament, which featured three East sub-regional sites for the first time, saw four venues used for the first time. In the East Regional, the tournament came to the state of South Carolina for the first time, with games played in Columbia at the Carolina Coliseum, home of the South Carolina Gamecocks. The East sub-regional had two new sites to go with the Palestra: Alumni Hall, on the campus of St. John's University, and Jadwin Gymnasium on the campus of Princeton University. Jadwin is the only Ivy League venue other than the Palestra to ever host a tournament game. And in the Mideast sub-regional, the University of Dayton Arena hosted games for the first time, starting its tenure as the most-used venue in tournament history.
This would be the last tournament to host five of the arenas: Carolina Coliseum, Daniel-Meyer Coliseum, Hec Edmundson Pavilion, St. John Arena and Smith Fieldhouse. The tournament will not return to Columbia until 2019, having been banned for a dozen years due to the Confederate Flag controversy at the South Carolina State House. While the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex continued to host games, the tournament is not scheduled to return to Fort Worth itself until 2022 when the new Dickies Arena opens. Seattle has continued to host games, first at the Kingdome and later at KeyArena. The tournament returned to Columbus in 2004 at the Nationwide Arena, and returned in 1972 to Provo and the Smith Fieldhouse's replacement, the Marriott Center.
