National championships in men's college basketball

by Hiram College at the 1904 Olympic Games in St. Louis. won the national intercollegiate basketball tournament in 1922 by the Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia The concept of a national championship in college basketball dates back to the earliest years of the sport in the 1890s. Columbia claimed the 1905 title with two wins over traveling Western Conference quints. Hiram competed in a round-robin competition with two other American schools, Wheton College and Latter-day Saints' University, winning both of their games. The victors were awarded Olympic gold medals along with a banner proclaiming the "Olympic World's College Basket Ball Championship". Chicago won the series in two games, and with it the national intercollegiate championship. The first collegiate team to win the Amateur Athletic Union basketball tournament was Utah in 1916. In 1920, Chicago again met Pennsylvania in a playoff between Western Conference and Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League champions. Penn was victorious and won the national title. The tournament was not played again. In 1935, the American Legion sponsored an intersectional "Rose Bowl", promoted as a basketball game "for the national collegiate title," on April 13 at the Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey. and 1957, retrospective lists of 'National Collegiate Champions' for the early years of the sport. In 1995 the Premo Power Poll, a mathematical system used to rank college basketball teams, was published in the Encyclopedia of College Basketball. The rankings were slightly modified and published as the Premo-Porretta Power Poll in the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia in 2009. These rankings stretch back to the very earliest days of the sport, long before nation-wide polling, and rank the teams based on strength of schedule. • Teams and selectors listed in italics indicate retroactively applied championships. == Early NIT and NCAA tournament era (1938–1950s) ==

, home of the NIT and venue of seven NCAA championship games between 1943 and 1950. showcasing the "National Championship Trophy" won by Temple in 1938. The National Invitation Tournament (NIT) was established in 1938, hosted at Madison Square Garden by the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association. while on March 27 Oregon won the NCAA championship. Both teams were recognized as national champions and asserted claims on the "mythical" national title. In 1940, Colorado and Duquesne were the first teams to play in both tournaments. Long Island and West Virginia, Invitation champions in 1941 and 1942, both treat their NIT titles as national championships. For the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, NCAA champions Kansas beat NAIA champions Southwest Missouri State and then NIT champions La Salle to place seven Jayhawks on the Olympic team that went on to win gold. For 1956 the Olympic Trials format changed, with a 14-man all-star team instead being selected from among all college quintets. in 1950.|alt=Two engraved silver trophies In 1950, the City College of New York became the first and only team to complete the "grand slam" of college basketball by winning the NIT and NCAA tournaments in the same year, defeating Bradley in both championship games and claiming the undisputed national title. The NCAA tournament successfully separated itself from the NIT in the wake of this far-reaching scandal by moving its finals out of Madison Square Garden, the very same venue that had contributed so massively to the tournament's growth and success in the 1940s. Now played in on-campus arenas, satisfying college administrators, the tournament also surpassed the NIT by expanding its field from 8 to 16 teams in 1951. The NIT had grown to 12 teams in 1949 and would stay there until 1965, while the ever-expanding NCAA tournament quickly jumped to 22 teams in 1953 and 25 teams by 1956. The popularity of the two tournaments did not fully preclude other teams from being lauded with national championship honors. In 1944 undefeated 15–0 Army was honored by the Helms Athletic Foundation and was the No. 1 team in the final post-tournament Converse-Dunkel Basketball Forecast. In 1954 25–0 SEC champions Kentucky were the top team in the nation, but three of the team's star players were ruled ineligible for post-season play by the NCAA due to graduation. Head coach Adolph Rupp kept the team out of the competition in protest; the Wildcats retained their No. 1 ranking in the post-tournament final AP Poll and collected the Helms Athletic Foundation selection. • Teams and selectors listed in italics indicate retroactively applied championships. ;Participants in both tournaments In 1970, Marquette and head coach Al McGuire turned down an invitation to the NCAA tournament due to perceived poor regional seeding and instead played in (and won) the NIT. The NCAA responded to this action by banning invited teams from playing in any other post-season tournament, thus definitively ending the NIT's contention for national championship-caliber teams. == NCAA tournament champions (1939–present) ==

championship game was played on March 27, 1939 at Patten Gymnasium on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. has won a record 11 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball championships. The NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament has been played since 1939. In its early years, the NCAA title did not give a team an uncontested claim to the national championship. Today the NCAA tournament is the sole accepted method for determining the national champion. ==National championship claims==

claimed the 1902 national championship in the pages of The Gopher yearbook. Among the claims are all of the NCAA tournament championships won since 1939. Some NIT championship seasons are claimed as national championships from years in which the Invitation was still a top-tier postseason tournament. The four Amateur Athletic Union tournaments won by collegiate teams are claimed, as are other early playoff and tournament championships. Helms Athletic Foundation national championships are claimed by some schools but ignored by others. == References ==