1940: Basketball

Basketball again asserted itself as the kingpin of American indoor sports, growing to new record proportions all over the United States. The game, now in its fiftieth year, earned many new records in 1940 — nearly 90,000,000 persons saw the game played. Madison Square Garden, New York, staged fifteen intercollegiate double headers that made new court history, with 212,672 spectators for the season, 18,318 for the largest single evening, and an average attendance of 14,178. These figures are an indication of the great popularity of the game all over the land.

The technique and coaching of the game have vastly improved. Almost a score of college teams finished the season well up in number of victories, yet none scored a monopoly. Although it is impossible to pick an All-American team from hundreds of skillful players, it is possible to select outstanding teams that excelled in major conference, intersectional and post-season tournaments and competitions.

The evenly matched struggles that characterized the sport this year were seen in upsets of teams picked to win, and ties between the leaders. Without regard to their proper order in college competition, Indiana won the N. C. A. A. tournament, captured 20 of 23 games, and was runner-up to Purdue in the Big Ten Conference. Colorado, invincible in New York by winning the third annual intercollegiate invitation tournament, clinched its third straight championship of the Rocky Mountain Big Seven, but fell by the wayside in a divisional semi-final of the N. C. A. A.

Purdue won the Big Ten championship, the thirteenth time to share in or win the title. There was a three-way tie for the Big Six Conference title between Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri, after Kansas was eliminated in the finals of the N. C. A. A. Oklahoma A. and M. led in the Missouri Valley Conference, placed third in the national invitation tourney, and won 25 straight games. Southern California won the Pacific Coast Conference and was runner-up to Kansas in Western N. C. A. A. playoffs. Another college team among the country's leaders was New York University, Metropolitan champion, winner of 18 games out of 19.

Dartmouth was champion of the Eastern League for the third straight year; Rice was the winner of the Southwestern Conference for the first time since 1918, and third in Western N. C. A. A. play-offs; Kentucky won the Southeastern Conference title after Alabama and Tennessee had shown better pre-tournament play. Two new names appeared in title fixtures: Millsaps College, winner of the Dixie Conference, and Tarkio College, winner of the Kansas City invitation tournament in which 32 small colleges participated.

In A. A. U. circles, the national championship was won by the Phillips Oilers team, of Bartlesville, Okla., over the previous year's victors, the Denver 'Nuggets.' Twenty-five states were represented in this tournament, held in Denver, bringing together a variance of styles of play. Following this tourney, sports writers and officials selected an All-American A. A. U. team comprising five Denver players and four Phillips players. The leading team among the district associations of the A. A. U. was the Ohrbach A. A. quintette, of New York, Metropolitan champions.