The 1966 NCAA University Division basketball tournament involved 22 schools playing in

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

play to determine the national men's

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champion of the

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University Division The NCAA University Division was a historic subdivision of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) consisting of member schools competing at the highest level of college sports. The University Division was first established as a basis ...

, now Division I. It began on March 7 and ended with the championship game on March 19 in

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. A total of 26 games were played, including a third place game in each region and a national third place game. Third- ranked Texas Western (now

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), coached by

Don Haskins Donald Lee Haskins (March 14, 1930 – September 7, 2008), nicknamed "The Bear", was an American basketball player and coach. He played college basketball for three years under coach Henry Iba at Oklahoma A&M (now Oklahoma State University). He ...

, won the national title with a 72–65 victory in the

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over top-ranked

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, led by head coach

Adolph Rupp Adolph Frederick Rupp (September 2, 1901 – December 10, 1977) was an American college basketball coach. Nicknamed the "Baron of the Bluegrass", he coached the University of Kentucky Wildcats to four NCAA Division I men's basketball tournam ...

. Haskins started five black players for the first time in NCAA Championship history. Jerry Chambers of

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was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. The

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film '' Glory Road'' is based on the story of the 1966 Texas Western team. Their tournament games against fourth-ranked

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and Kentucky are depicted in the film. The tournament is also significant in that it was the last tournament until

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, and one of two since the league's official founding, that the

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did not send a representative to the tournament. The league champion, Penn, refused to comply with an NCAA edict that all teams must certify a 1.6 GPA for all student-athletes; the Ivy League and the university did not believe that the NCAA had the power to dictate such things, and as such the team was banned. They would have played Syracuse in the East regional at Blacksburg. This was the only NCAA tournament between 1961 and 1982 which did not include

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Locations

Teams

Bracket

East region

Mideast region

Midwest region

West region

Final Four

National Third Place Game

Regional third place games

Game summaries

The Tournament is most remembered for the all-black starting five of Texas Western defeating an all-white starting five for Kentucky in the championship game. Clem Haskins and Dwight Smith became the first black athletes to integrate the

Western Kentucky Hilltoppers basketball The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers men's basketball team is the men's basketball team that represents Western Kentucky University (WKU) in Bowling Green, Kentucky. The Hilltoppers currently compete in Conference USA. The team's most recent appea ...

program in the Fall of 1963. This put Western Kentucky at the forefront to integrate college basketball in the Southeast. The Western Kentucky Hilltoppers were 2 points away from defeating Michigan and meeting the University of Kentucky Wildcats in the Mideast regional final. A controversial foul called against Smith during a jump ball put Cazzie Russell on the free throw line for Michigan, where he scored the tying and winning baskets.O'Donnell, Chuck - Cazzie Russell: converting two free throws with no time left advanced Michigan in the 1966 NCAA Tournament - The Game I'll Never Forget - University of Michigan versus Western Kentucky University. Basketball Digest, January/February 2004 issue

References

{{1966 Texas Western Miners basketball navbox NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament

Ncaa The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates College athletics in the United States, student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, and Simon Fraser University, 1 in Canada. ...

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