1979 Missouri Valley Conference Men's Basketball Tournament

1979 Missouri Valley Conference Men's Basketball Tournament
Classification Division I
Season 1978–79
Teams 8
Finals site Hulman Center
Terre Haute, Indiana
Champions Indiana State (1st title)
Winning coach Bill Hodges (1st title)

The 1979 Missouri Valley Conference Men's Basketball Tournament was held February 27–March 3; the first rounds were played on campus sites and the final was contested at the Hulman Center at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana.[1]

Led by future Basketball Hall of Fame member Larry Bird, top-seeded Indiana State defeated New Mexico State in the title game, 69–59, to win their first MVC tournament title.

The Sycamores subsequently received an automatic bid to the 1979 NCAA Tournament, where they would advance to the national championship game.

Format

Even without any new Missouri Valley members, the conference decreased the size of the tournament field from nine to eight. In turn, only the top eight teams from the conference's regular season standings were included in the bracket.

All eight qualifying teams were placed into the first round, seeded and paired based on regular season conference records. The highest-seeded team in each game served as the host.

Bracket

  First Round
Tuesday, February 27
Campus sites		 Second Round
Thursday, March 1
Campus sites		 Semifinals
Saturday, March 3
Campus sites
                           
  1 Indiana State* 94  
8 West Texas State 84  
  1 Indiana State* 79  
    5 Southern Illinois 72  
5 Southern Illinois 71
  4 Creighton* 67  
    1 Indiana State* 69
  2 New Mexico State 59
  3 Wichita State* 70  
6 Drake 69  
3 Wichita State 81
    2 New Mexico State* 85  
7 Tulsa 79
  2 New Mexico State* 85  

References

  1. ↑ "1978-79 Missouri Valley Conference Season Summary". sports-reference.com. Sports Reference LLC. 2018. Retrieved February 19, 2018.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.