“March Madness” first hit New Orleans 80 years ago

Forty years ago this week, the Final Four first came to New Orleans.

Forty years before that, the Crescent City got its first taste of the NCAA Tournament.

It was a different time and place in March 1942. Eight teams, not 68, made the tournament field. The term “Final Four” was at least three decades away from getting used – and really couldn’t be because there were only two regions.

One of those regional sites was Tulane Gymnasium, now known as Devlin Fieldhouse in Fogelman Arena.

The building was less than a decade old at that point, having been constructed with proceeds from the Green Wave football team’s trip to the 1932 Rose Bowl. At a listed capacity of 5,000, it was one of the biggest on-campus buildings in America at the time.

Dartmouth, Illinois, Kentucky and Penn State were sent to New Orleans for the East Regional on March 20-21, 1942, to battle it out for a spot in the championship game a week later. The West Regional featured Colorado, Kansas, Rice and Stanford.

The opening night featured two tightly contested matchups, with Dartmouth edging Penn State 44-39 and Kentucky getting past Illinois 46-44.

For the storied Wildcat program led by Adolph Rupp, it would be their first appearance in a national semifinal.

Dartmouth would dominate the following night, defeating Kentucky 47-28 to reach the title game against Stanford, which won the West Regional, a week later. The Indians, as Stanford was known then, won the championship 53-38.

That West Regional, and the championship game, was played at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City – a site that has hosted more NCAA Tournament games than any venue in history.

Spin forward to this year and Loyola’s run to an NAIA national title. Their first two rounds were played next door to their campus at the same building that was once Tulane Gymnasium. They won to advance to the national tournament, played at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City.

Eighty years later, the game and everything around it has changed, but some things still stay the same.