1939: Basketball

Basketball moved up in popularity as a major indoor sport during 1939, bringing an appreciable financial return and considerable prestige to every college in the United States boasting one or more teams. Not only did the game play to larger numbers than ever before, an estimated gallery of 5,000,000 persons (in New York 196,000 saw fourteen doubleheaders), but many college teams traveled long distances to compete. The playing rules of the game went unchanged during the year. The sport lost its chief mentor in the death of Dr. John W. Naismith, who started the game in 1891 and saw it grow to its present massive proportions.

In the Amateur Athletic Union, the Denver Nuggets captured the national championship title from the Phillips University team, of Enid, Okla., in a game played on its home court, where the title has been decided for the past six years. The Galveston (Tex.) Anico's won the national title in the women's division of the A.A.U., which had the distinction of being coached by a woman, Miss Frances Williams, the first woman to coach a champion women's team.

The team of Long Island University won 42 consecutive games in the East, a standard never before attained by a major college team. Its counterpart in the West is the team of the University of Oregon, which defeated Ohio State for the N.C.A.A. title. Among many sectional championships and doubleheaders, the Metropolitan (N. Y.) Basketball Writers' Association attracted 50,572 persons to Madison Square Garden during the three evenings of its second annual national invitation tournament.

In other sectional championships, Rhode Island State captured the New England Conference crown for the third year in succession, with an average of 70 points during its twenty-one game schedule. Chet Jaworski, its leading player, shot 477 points, making himself a claimant for national high-scoring honors. The United States Military Academy showed its best team in many years: its only losses were to Ohio State, the Western Conference winner, and to St. John's, which took the metropolitan championship.

Dartmouth, in winning the crown in the Eastern Intercollegiate League, repeated its previous year's victory. Its sophomore star, Gus Broberg, scored 159 points for a new league record. The only tie in the various tournaments was that of Carnegie and Georgetown, playing for the Eastern Intercollegiate Conference title.

In the South where basketball is making great headway, Clemson College (S. C.) captured the Southern Conference crown from Maryland, which had been playing in the big-time games all season, in spite of Lake Forest's having the best average in the group. Kentucky teams did well. Kentucky College won the Southeastern Conference, and west Kentucky State Teachers captured the Southern Intercollegiate A.A. title. The Dixie Conference victory went to the strong Mississippi College quintette.