Final Four Fact February: The Last Ride of John Wooden

UCLA's unprecedented and unmatched dynasty ushered in a new era of college basketball in John Wooden's final NCAA Tournament.

What could be considered the most significant NCAA Tournament in shifting the direction of college basketball turns 50 this year.

On its golden anniversary, the 1975 NCAA Tournament deserves recognition as the prototype for today’s cultural phenomenon known as March Madness. This was the inaugural postseason to extend at-large bids to teams that did not win their conferences, ostensibly opening up the bracket to the chaos and unpredictability that defines the event each year.

The 1975 NCAA Tournament was also the last of 10 culminating in a John Wooden-coached UCLA team cutting down the nets. An argument could be made that it’s the most impressive of Wooden’s 10 national championships, too, for a few reasons.

First, the expansion of the NCAA Tournament to 32 teams heightened the degree of difficulty. In the half-century since this postseason, it’s fair to say that the team left standing after the Final Four isn’t always, or even often, the best team in the regular season. That’s because a single-elimination format inherently lends itself to upsets, and the more teams involved — and thus the more games required to reach the championship — the greater the possibility for upheaval.

Furthermore, this was perhaps the least impressive UCLA lineup on paper that John Wooden had coached in several years. And that leads us into the 1975 edition of Final Four Fact February.