Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... March 1939: Before the Madness - The Story of the First NCAA Basketball Tournament Championsby Terry Frei
None Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. I enjoyed reading this while my beloved Wisconsin Badgers were making their trip to (and then losing in) the Final Four. The author says in his acknowledgments that he thought of writing this over a decade ago and wishes he would have before so many of the actors died. I agree, but he still did a great job of getting pieces of the story from people who knew the people involved very well. ( ) I enjoyed reading this while my beloved Wisconsin Badgers were making their trip to (and then losing in) the Final Four. The author says in his acknowledgments that he thought of writing this over a decade ago and wishes he would have before so many of the actors died. I agree, but he still did a great job of getting pieces of the story from people who knew the people involved very well. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. March Madness and all the hoopla surrounding the annual national college basketball championship tournament had to start somewhere and this book beautifully chronicles the early days of the tournament, focusing on the the first national championship tournament winner, the Oregon Webfoots, who won the inaugural tournament in 1939.Besides unearthing a lot of interesting information about the games and the players on that championship team, the author also weaves in current events leading up to World War 2, as well as interesting facts about the state of the game at that time. For instance, this was soon after the rule providing for a center court jump ball after each basket was eliminated. Also, James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, was still alive and attended the tournament on the Northwestern University campus in Chicagoland. Also of interest were the parts addressing the rivalry between this national championship tournament and the "national invitation tournament" now called the NIT which began in the previous year and focused more on East Coast teams. This is a very interesting book, even for the non-basketball fan, one that I would recommend. This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers. I thought this was an entertaining read and somewhat informative. However, Frei seemed to go into it with a bias in favor of the 1938-1939 Oregon team. He laughed off any claims that the 1939 LIU team might have been as good by criticizing their schedule strength as much as anything. However, the fact is that they beat a team that beat Oregon and had a better record than Oregon. That doesn't necessarily mean that Oregon wasn't deserving of being called the first NCAA champions, but I also don't think that Frei can be considered a reliable source on the issue considering the biases that are hinted at in the introduction. This is an author who has ties to Oregon and grew up idolizing this particular team. He's hardly a reliable source. no reviews | add a review
In 1939, the Oregon Webfoots, coached by the visionary Howard Hobson, stormed through the first NCAA basketball tournament, which was viewed as a risky coast-to-coast undertaking and perhaps only a one-year experiment. Seventy-five years later, following the tournament's evolution into a national obsession, the first champions are still celebrated as "The Tall Firs." They indeed had astounding height along the front line, but with a pair of racehorse guards who had grown up across the street from each other in a historic Oregon fishing town, they also played a revolutionarily fast-paced game. Author Terry Frei's track record as a narrative historian in such books as the acclaimed Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming, plus a personal connection as an Oregon native whose father coached football at the University of Oregon for seventeen seasons, makes him uniquely qualified to tell this story of the first tournament and the first champions, in the context of their times. Plus, Frei long has been a fan of Clair Bee, the Long Island University coach who later in life wrote the Chip Hilton Sports Series books, mesmerizing young readers who didn't know the backstory told here. In 1939, the Bee-coached LIU Blackbirds won the NCAA tournament's rival, the national invitation tournament in New York--then in only its second year, and still under the conflict-of-interest sponsorship of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association. Frei assesses both tournaments and, given the myths advanced for many years, his conclusions in many cases are surprising. Both events unfolded in a turbulent month when it was becoming increasingly apparent that Hitler's belligerence would draw Europe and perhaps the world into another war . . . soon. Amid heated debates over the extent to which America should become involved in Europe's affairs this time, the men playing in both tournaments wondered if they might be called on to serve and fight. Of course, as some of the Webfoots would demonstrate in especially notable fashion, the answer was yes. It was a March before the Madness. No library descriptions found. |
LibraryThing Early Reviewers AlumTerry Frei's book March 1939: Before the Madness--The Story of the First NCAA Basketball Tournament Champions was available from LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)796.323The arts Recreational and performing arts Athletic and outdoor sports and games Ball sports Ball and net sports BasketballLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |