The 1952–53 NCAA men's basketball season began in December 1952, progressed through the regular season and conference tournaments, and concluded with the 1953 NCAA basketball tournament championship game on March 18, 1953, at Municipal Auditorium in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

. The

Indiana Hoosiers The Indiana Hoosiers are the intercollegiate sports teams and players of Indiana University Bloomington, named after the colloquial term for people from the state of Indiana. The Hoosiers participate in NCAA Division I, Division I of the Nationa ...

won their second NCAA national championship with a 69–68 victory over the

Kansas Jayhawks The Kansas Jayhawks, commonly referred to as simply KU or Kansas, are the athletic teams that represent the University of Kansas. KU is one of three schools in the state of Kansas that participate in NCAA Division I. The Jayhawks are also a mem ...

Rule changes

Teams must take a

free throw In basketball, free throws or foul shots are unopposed attempts to score points by shooting from behind the free-throw line (informally known as the foul line or the charity stripe), a line situated at the end of the Key (basketball), restricted ...

after a foul, as had been the practice through the 1938–39 season. Previously, under a rule that had been in effect since the 1939–40 season, a team could waive its free throw and instead take the ball at mid-court after a foul.

Season headlines

* Prior to the season, the NCAA ruled that colleges and universities could no longer count games played against non-collegiate opponents in their annual won-loss records. Previously, it had been a common practice for many years for colleges and universities to include non-collegiate opponents in their schedules, with the games recognized as part of their official record for the season. * The California Basketball Association began play, with five original members. It would be renamed the West Coast Athletic Conference in 1956 and the

West Coast Conference The West Coast Conference (WCC) — known as the California Basketball Association from 1952 to 1956 and then as the West Coast Athletic Conference until 1989 — is a collegiate athletic conference affiliated with NCAA Division I consisting of ...

in 1989. * The NCAA forced

Kentucky Kentucky ( , ), officially the Commonwealth of Kentucky, is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States and one of the states of the Upper South. It borders Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio to the north; West Virginia and Virginia to ...

to suspend its men's basketball program for the entire 1952–53 season as a result of the

CCNY point-shaving scandal The CCNY point-shaving scandal of 1950–51 was a college basketball point-shaving gambling scandal that involved seven American schools in all, with four in the New York metropolitan area, two in the Midwest, and one in the South. However, most ...

, which had been revealed in 1951. * The NCAA tournament expanded from 16 to 22 teams.

Season outlook

Pre-season polls

The Top 20 from the

AP Poll The Associated Press poll (AP poll) provides weekly rankings of the top 25 NCAA teams in one of three Division I college sports: football, men's basketball and women's basketball. The rankings are compiled by polling 62 sportswriters and broadca ...

and the UP

Coaches Poll The Coaches Poll is a weekly ranking of the top 25 NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) college football, Division I college basketball, and Division I college baseball teams. The football version of the poll has been known officially ...

during the pre-season.

Conference membership changes

Regular season

Conference winners and tournaments

Statistical leaders

Post-season tournaments

NCAA tournament

Final Four

* Third Place – Washington 88, LSU 69

National Invitation tournament

Semifinals & finals

* Third Place – Duquesne 81, Manhattan 67

Awards

Consensus All-American teams

Major player of the year awards

* Helms Player of the Year:

Bob Houbregs Robert J. Houbregs (March 12, 1932 – May 28, 2014) was a Canadian professional basketball player. Houbregs was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1987. Basketball career A 6-foot 8-inch, 225-pound forward-centre, from Quee ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

Other major awards

* NIT/Haggerty Award (Top player in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

metro area):

Walter Dukes Walter F. Dukes (June 23, 1930 – March 13, 2001) was a center for the New York Knicks (1955–1956), Minneapolis Lakers (1956–1957) and Detroit Pistons (1957–1963). He played college basketball for the Seton Hall Pirates. Born in Roches ...

Seton Hall Seton Hall University (SHU) is a private Catholic research university in South Orange, New Jersey. Founded in 1856 by then-Bishop James Roosevelt Bayley and named after his aunt, Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, Seton Hall is the oldest diocesa ...

Coaching changes

A number of teams changed coaches during the season and after it ended.

References

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