1953 NCAA basketball tournament

The 1953 NCAA basketball tournament involved 22 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of NCAA college basketball. The 15th edition of the tournament began on March 10, 1953, and ended with the championship game on March 18 in Kansas City, Missouri. A total of 26 games were played, including a third-place game in each region and a national third-place game.

Indiana, coached by Branch McCracken, won the tournament title with a 69–68 victory in the final game over Kansas, coached by Phog Allen. B. H. Born of Kansas was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. The Hoosiers became the third team, after Oklahoma A&M in 1945–46 and Kentucky in 1948–49, to win two titles and the second of three teams to win titles in their first two tournament appearances (after Oklahoma A&M); however, unlike Oklahoma A&M before them and San Francisco after, their first two tournament appearances were 13 years apart.

Locations

The following are the sites selected to host each round of the 1953 tournament:

East-1 Region

First round (March 10): The Palestra, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (Hosts: University of Pennsylvania, Ivy League)

East-1 Regional (March 13 and 14): Reynolds Coliseum, Raleigh, North Carolina (Host: North Carolina State University)

East-2 Region

First round (March 10): Allen County War Memorial Coliseum, Fort Wayne, Indiana (Host: Big Ten Conference)

East-2 Regional (March 12 and 13): Chicago Stadium, Chicago, Illinois (Hosts: Loyola University Chicago, DePaul University)

West-1 Region

West-1 Regional (March 12 and 13): Ahearn Field House, Manhattan, Kansas (Host: Kansas State University)

West-2 Region

First round (March 10): Hec Edmundson Pavilion, Seattle, Washington (Host: University of Washington); Stanford Pavilion, Palo Alto, California (Host: Stanford University)

West-2 Regional (March 13 and 14): Oregon State Coliseum, Corvallis, Oregon (Host: Oregon State University)

Final Four

March 17 and 18: Municipal Auditorium, Kansas City, Missouri (Host: Missouri Valley Conference)

Teams

Bracket

East-1 Region—Raleigh

East-2 Region—Chicago

West-1 Region—Manhattan, Kansas

West-2 Region—Corvallis, Oregon

Final Four—Kansas City

Notes

As would be expected with the expanded field, a then-record ten teams - Eastern Kentucky, Fordham, Hardin-Simmons, Idaho State, Lebanon Valley, LSU, Miami University, Notre Dame, Penn and Seattle - made their tournament debut. The record would be broken in 1955 with eleven new teams, and again in 1981 with twelve newcomers.
Lebanon Valley College, at 425 students, would become by far the smallest school to ever field a team, as well as win a game, in the NCAA tournament. Following the 1956 split of the NCAA into University and College divisions, as well as the subsequent split into the current three division format, it is most likely that this record will never be broken. This would be LVC's only appearance in the tournament; they are also the only team from the tournament to not play in the tournament again.