1938: Basketball

Basketball this year continued to rank first in point of popularity in the winter sport arenas. In the finals of the leading United States intercollegiate basketball tourney, which the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association hope to make the 'Basketball World Series,' Temple University's crack six-foot-four college basketball team overwhelmed Colorado University before a crowd of 14,400 in Madison Square Garden, New York City, with a score of 60-36. In the third place play-offs of this tourney held the same evening, March 16, Oklahoma Agricultural and Mechanical College defeated New York University 37-24.

On March 19, in the finals of the Amateur Athletic Union's National Basketball Championships held at Denver, Colo., the Kansas City Healeys defeated the Denver Safeways, 1937 champions, in an overtime play with a score of 40-38. In the women's finals of this tourney, held March 26 at Wichita, Kansas, the Galveston Anicos overcame the Wichita Thurstons with a score of 13-8, thus winning the National Women's basketball crown.

In conference and league circles, Dartmouth captured the Eastern Intercollegiate League title, winning eight league games and losing four. Harvard and Pennsylvania followed, each winning seven and losing five games. Columbia, Cornell, Princeton and Yale ranked in that order. In the Middle West, Purdue's powerful five won for the fifth time the Big Ten Conference title.

In the South, Duke University defeated Clemson College, 40-30, in the Southern Conference tournament held March 5, at Raleigh, N. C., winning the Southern championship. The Georgia Institute of Technology beat Mississippi College with a score of 58-47, capturing the Southeastern Conference championship, while at Bowling Green, Ky., on the same day, March 5, the Western Kentucky team obtained the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association's League Championship for the second consecutive year, defeating Murray College, 44-39. On the Pacific Coast, the Pacific Coast League Championship was won for the second consecutive year by Stanford's impressive quintet, defeating Oregon, the Northern Division Champion, two straight games, 52-39 and 59-51 in the play-offs held March 11-12 at San Francisco.

A United States basketball team composed of players from Eastern colleges and representing the Amateur Athletic Union toured South America, playing games in Chile, Peru, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina. The United States team won twenty of the twenty-four games played.

In the American Professional Basketball League, the Jersey Reds defeated the Brooklyn Jewels with a score of 30-28 in a close game of the play-offs, winning the League championship. The New York Celtics and the Brooklyn Visitations of this League were eliminated from the finals.