The 1939 NCAA basketball tournament involved eight schools playing in

single-elimination A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

play to determine the

NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as NCAA March Madness and commonly called March Madness, is a single-elimination tournament played each spring in the United States, currently featuring 68 college basketball teams from ...

. It was the first NCAA basketball national championship tournament, although it was operated by the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) at the time. The tournament began on March 17 and ended with the

championship game In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion. Championship systems Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship. Title match system In this system ...

on March 27 on

Northwestern University Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Charte ...

's campus in

Evanston, Illinois Evanston ( ) is a city, suburb of Chicago. Located in Cook County, Illinois, United States, it is situated on the North Shore along Lake Michigan. Evanston is north of Downtown Chicago, bordered by Chicago to the south, Skokie to the west, Wil ...

. A total of eight games were played, including a single third-place game in the West region. The East region did not hold a third-place game until

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, and there was no national third-place game until

1946 Events January * January 6 - The 1946 North Vietnamese parliamentary election, first general election ever in Vietnam is held. * January 7 – The Allies recognize the Austrian republic with its 1937 borders, and divide the country into f ...

Oregon Oregon () is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. The Columbia River delineates much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while the Snake River delineates much of it ...

, coached by

Howard Hobson Howard Andrew "Hobby" Hobson (July 4, 1903 – June 9, 1991) was an American basketball player and coach of football, basketball, and baseball. He served as the head basketball coach at Southern Oregon Normal School—now Southern Oregon Universi ...

, won the national title with a 46–33 victory in the final game over

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

, coached by

Harold Olsen Harold G. Olsen (May 12, 1895 – October 29, 1953) was a college basketball, college men's basketball coach. The Rice Lake, Wisconsin native was the head coach of the Ohio State University from 1922 to 1946. That year, he became the first head c ...

. Jimmy Hull of Ohio State was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. Despite its success in this first tournament, Oregon would not make another Final Four until

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Schedule and venues

The following are the sites selected to host each round of the 1939 tournament:

Regionals

;March 17 and 18 :East Regional, The Palestra,

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

;March 20 and 21 :West Regional, California Coliseum, Golden Gate International Exposition,

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

Championship Game

;March 27: : Patten Gymnasium,

Teams

Bracket

Regional third place

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1939 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

Tournament A tournament is a competition involving at least three competitors, all participating in a sport or game. More specifically, the term may be used in either of two overlapping senses: # One or more competitions held at a single venue and concentr ...

NCAA basketball tournament NCAA basketball tournament NCAA basketball tournament NCAA basketball tournament