The 1974 NCAA Division I basketball tournament involved 25 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 mat ...

play to determine the national champion of men's

NCAA Division I NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athleti ...

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. It was the first tournament to be designated as a Division I championship—previously, NCAA member schools had been divided into the "University Division" and "College Division". The NCAA created its current three-division setup, effective with the 1973–74 academic year, by moving all of its University Division schools to Division I and splitting the College Division members into Division II (fewer

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) and Division III (no athletic scholarships allowed). Previous tournaments would retroactively be considered Division I championships. The tournament began on March 9, 1974, and ended with the championship game on March 25 in

Greensboro, North Carolina Greensboro (; formerly Greensborough) is a city in and the county seat of Guilford County, North Carolina, United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, third-most populous city in North Carolina after Charlotte, North Car ...

. Until

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, when

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defeated

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, it was the last tournament in which neither school had previously appeared in any national championship game (5 years later Michigan State would defeat Indiana St in each school's inaugural Division I National Finals, but Indiana State had previously contested and lost finals in the NAIA national championships and the NCAA Division II National Championships). A total of 29 games were played, including a third-place game in each region and a national third-place game. North Carolina State, coached by Norm Sloan, won the national title with a 76–64 victory in the final game over Marquette, coached by

Al McGuire Alfred James McGuire (September 7, 1928 – January 26, 2001) was an American college basketball coach and broadcaster, the head coach at Marquette University from 1964 to 1977. He won a national championship in his final season at Marquette, a ...

. This result ended UCLA's record streak of seven consecutive titles. David Thompson of North Carolina State was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. This was the final year that only conference champions and independents could participate in the tournament. During the same time in 1974, the Collegiate Commissioners' Association held a tournament in St. Louis, Missouri. They invited the second-place teams from eight conferences to participate. In 1975, the NCAA would expand the field to include at-large bids for conference runners-up.

Tournament notes

The

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

– North Carolina State semifinal game made ''

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''s list of the greatest NCAA tournament games of all time at #13.Mike Douchant �
Greatest 63 games in NCAA Tournament history
The Sports Xchange, published in USA Today, March 25, 2002 UCLA star

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calls that game the most disappointing outcome of his entire basketball career, given how UCLA lost a 5-point lead late in regulation and a 7-point lead in the 2nd overtime, before NC State rallied to win, 80–77. The game, played in Greensboro, was like a home game for the Wolfpack; UCLA had defeated NC State by 18 points in a neutral site game in St. Louis (where UCLA defeated

Memphis State } The University of Memphis (UofM) is a public university, public research university in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1912, the university has an enrollment of more than 22,000 students. The university maintains the Herff College of Engineering ...

the previous March to win its seventh consecutive national championship) earlier in the season. The Wolfpack became the fifth team in history to win the national championship playing in its home state.

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won the 1950 NCAA championship (as well as the NIT championship) at

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in New York City,

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won the 1958 championship at

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, and UCLA won both the

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and 1972 championships at the

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. UCLA also would win the 1975 championship in its home state, at the

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. No team has accomplished the feat since then, although the

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won the 1988 championship in nearby

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, at

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, which is closer to the KU campus in

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than Greensboro is to Raleigh. This was the last Sweet Sixteen appearance for Creighton and

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until the

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tournament, when both teams returned for the first time in 47 years. Thanks in large part to the reclassification of Division I, the 1974 tournament is the last tournament to include a team no longer in Division I. The

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spent one year in the modern Division I, winning the

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before dropping to Division II.

Schedule and venues

The following are the sites that were selected to host each round of the 1974 tournament: First round *March 9 **East Region *** Alumni Hall,

Jamaica, New York Jamaica is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Queens. It is mainly composed of a large commercial and retail area, though part of the neighborhood is also residential. Jamaica is bordered by Hollis to the east; St. Albans, Springf ...

*** WVU Coliseum,

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*** 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. Since ...

**Mideast Region ***

Hulman Center The Hulman Center is a 10,200-seat multi-purpose arena on the campus of Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana, United States.

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**Midwest Region ***

UNT Coliseum The UNT Coliseum is a 9,797-seat multi-purpose arena located in Denton, Texas, United States, built in 1973. While the arena's formal name is the UNT Coliseum, the building is more commonly referred to as the Super Pit, a nickname derived from ...

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**West Region ***

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Regional semifinals, 3rd-place games, and finals (Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight) *March 14 and 16 **East Regional,

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**Mideast Regional, Memorial Coliseum,

Tuscaloosa, Alabama Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population o ...

**Midwest Regional, Mabee Center,

Tulsa, Oklahoma Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region wit ...

**West Regional,

McKale Center McKale Memorial Center is an athletic arena in the southwest United States, located on the campus of the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona. As the home of the university's Wildcats basketball team of the Pac-12 Conference, it is primar ...

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National semifinals, 3rd-place game, and championship (Final Four and championship) *March 23 and 25 ** Greensboro Memorial Coliseum,

Teams

Bracket

* – Denotes overtime period

East region

Mideast region

Midwest region

West region

Final Four

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1974 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

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Basketball in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament 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 fro ...