The 1975 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament involved 32 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division Icollege basketball. It began on March 15, 1975, and ended with the championship game on March 31 at the San Diego Sports Arena, now known as Pechanga Arena San Diego, in San Diego, California. A total of 36 games were played, including a third place game in each region and a national third place game.
The Bruins again had an advantage by playing the Final Four in their home state. It was the last time a team won the national championship playing in its home state.
As of 2018, it is the last time Oregon State has officially won an NCAA tournament game. (The Beavers won two games in the 1982 tournament, but those wins were later vacated by the NCAA.) Of the major conferences, only Nebraska, which has never won an NCAA tournament game, has had a longer active winning drought.
This was the last tournament in which third-place games were contested in each regional. The national third-place game would continue to be played through the 1981 tournament.
This was also the first NCAA tournament to allow (or indeed, have room for) more than one team per conference. Previously, only one team from each conference was allowed. This change was response to a number of factors:
The new selection criteria threatened to exclude Northeastern teams, which did not belong to conferences. To address this problem, this was the first NCAA Tournament to grant automatic bids to the winners of ECAC regional tournaments for Northeastern Division I independents organized by the Eastern College Athletic Conference, a loose sports federation of Northeastern colleges and universities. This practice would continue through the 1982 tournament.[2][3]
Finally, the national final was the last game for UCLA coaching legend John Wooden, who had announced his retirement at the press conference following the semi-final game with Louisville. Wooden won his tenth and final NCAA Division I Men's Basketball championship.[4]
There were two memorable games in the 1975 tournament. Number 2 ranked Kentucky upset previously unbeaten Indiana 92–90 in their regional final. The Hoosiers, coached by Bob Knight, were undefeated and the number one team in the nation, when leading scorer Scott May suffered a broken arm in a win over arch-rival Purdue. This was the only loss Indiana would suffer between March 1974 and December 1976. In the national semifinals, UCLA defeated Louisville, coached by former Wooden assistant Denny Crum, 75–74 in overtime, rallying late in regulation to force overtime and coming from behind in overtime to win on a last second shot by Richard Washington.
Both games made USA Today's list of the greatest NCAA tournament games of all time, with the former at #8 and the latter at #28.[5]
The city of San Diego became the fourteenth host city, and the San Diego Sports Arena (known now as Pechanga Arena San Diego) the fifteenth host venue, for the Final Four. To date, this is not only the only time the city has hosted the Final Four (the second straight city to do so and fourth overall), but it was also the only time the venue itself ever hosted any tournament games. All games in the city since have been at the Viejas Arena on the campus of San Diego State University, whose Aztecs used the SDSA as their primary home venue from 1966 to 1997. Coincidentally, one of the other venues to only host one Final Four, the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, was the West Regional site this year. The tournament saw three new venues in three new cities. The tournament came to the city of Providence and the Providence Civic Center for the first time, the first of twelve appearances through 2021 for the downtown home of the Providence College Friars. The tournament also came to the Phoenix metropolitan area for the first time, with games played at Arizona State University in suburban Tempe at their brand-new Activity Center (known now as Wells Fargo Arena). And for the first time, the tournament came to the Palouse, with games played at Washington State University in Pullman at the then-two-year-old Performing Arts Coliseum. The tournament also saw the last games played at the Memorial Coliseums in Lexington and Portland, as well as the Lubbock Municipal Coliseum and the Pan-American Center in Las Cruces. Lexington and Portland have both hosted games since (at Rupp Arena and the Moda Center), but the tournament has not come back to Las Cruces or Lubbock since.
^Bill Free – This Overtime Lasts 25 YearsArchived 2008-09-12 at the Wayback Machine The 1974 team left it all out on the floor. Baltimore Sun, hosted at University of Maryland Terrapins athletic site, February 20, 1999
