The 1968 NCAA University Division basketball tournament involved 23 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 champion of men's

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. ...

Division I

college basketball College basketball is basketball that is played by teams of Student athlete, student-athletes at universities and colleges. In the Higher education in the United States, United States, colleges and universities are governed by collegiate athle ...

. It began on March 9, 1968, and ended with the championship game on March 23 in

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. A total of 27 games were played, including a third-place game in each region and a national third-place game.

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

, coached by

John Wooden John Robert Wooden (October 14, 1910 – June 4, 2010) was an American basketball coach and player. Nicknamed "the Wizard of Westwood", he won ten National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, nati ...

, won the national title with a 78–55 victory in the final game over

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, coached by

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. Lew Alcindor of UCLA was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player for the second of three consecutive years. This UCLA team, composed of three All-Americans, Player of the Year Alcindor, Lucius Allen, and Mike Warren, along with dead eye pure shooter Lynn Shackleford (most of his shots would be 3 pointers today) and burly senior power forward Mike Lynn is considered to be one of the greatest teams in college basketball history. The NCAA semi-final match between the Houston Cougars and

UCLA Bruins The UCLA Bruins are the athletic teams that represent the University of California, Los Angeles. The Bruin men's and women's teams participate in NCAA Division I as part of the Big Ten Conference and the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation (MPSF ...

was a re-match of the college basketball Game of the Century held in January at the

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, in the Cougars' home city. The match was historic, the first nationally syndicated college basketball game and the first to play in a domed stadium before more than 52,000 fans. It was UCLA's only loss in two years, a two-pointer, to the then-#2 Houston, but with UCLA's dominating center Alcindor playing with an eye injury that limited his effectiveness after being hospitalized the week before. The loss broke a 47-game winning streak for UCLA. In the March NCAA Tournament Final 4, the Bruins at full strength avenged that loss with a 101–69 drubbing of that same Houston team, now ranked #1, in UCLA's home city at the Memorial Sports Arena. UCLA limited Houston's

Elvin Hayes Elvin Ernest Hayes (born November 17, 1945), nicknamed "the Big E", is an American former professional basketball player and radio analyst for his alma mater Houston Cougars. He is a member of the NBA's 50th and 75th anniversary teams, and ...

, who was averaging 37.7 points per game but was held to only 10. Bruins coach

credited his assistant, Jerry Norman, for devising the diamond-and-one defense that contained Hayes.

Locations

Teams

Bracket

* – Denotes overtime period

East region

Mideast region

Midwest region

West region

Final Four

National third-place game

Regional third-place games

Notes

*This would be the last year of the 23 team field, as the field would stay at 25 teams for the next six seasons until the expansion of the field to 32 teams in the 1975 tournament. *Four teams - East Tennessee State, Florida State, New Mexico and Weber State - made their tournament debuts. Weber State would return to the tournament for five consecutive seasons; Florida State and New Mexico would not return until 1972 and 1974, respectively; and East Tennessee State would not return for 21 seasons, until 1989. *Two teams - Bowling Green and Columbia - made their most recent tournament appearances in this tournament. They are tied for the third longest active drought behind Tennessee Tech (1963) and Dartmouth (1959), and are currently tied for the fourth longest drought all-time, after Tennessee Tech, Dartmouth and Harvard (1946–2012, 66 years).

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:1968 Ncaa Men's Division I Basketball Tournament 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. ...

NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, branded as March Madness, or The Big Dance, is a single-elimination tournament played in the United States to determine the men's college basketball national champion of the NCAA Division I, Di ...