The Big Dance
The Story of the NCAA Basketball Tournament
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- €9.99
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- €9.99
Publisher Description
Covered by four networks, allowing every game to be televised, “March Madness” has become an American phenomenon. This is the story of the tournament, from its beginnings seventy-three years ago as an eight-team "bracket" to today's sixty-eight-team format—from "Cinderella" teams, to perennial powerhouses, to buzzer-beaters, upsets, and dynasties.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The NCAA basketball tournament has evolved into one of the most prominent annual sporting events in the United States, but its colorful, far-reaching history proves too big for veteran sports writers Wilner (Harvard Beats Yale 29-29) and Rappoport to handle. Only a few pages are devoted to the tournament s humble eight-team beginnings in 1939; instead, Wilner and Rappoport rely on dozens of smaller stories divided into chapters such as Great Performances, The Coaching Giants, Classic Confrontations, and Tourney Blunders. Highlights include North Carolina s back-to-back triple-overtime wins in the 1957 semifinal and national championship games; the evolution of UCLA s dynasty, which won 10 national titles in 12 seasons between 1964 and 1975; major upsets by North Carolina State in 1983 and Villanova two years later; and a condensed history of the women s tournament. Similar in format and style to Rappoport s The Little League That Could, this selective account shoots and misses with dull copy ( How would you describe one of college basketball s legendary coaches? A winner. ) and little attribution. However, in a perceptive epilogue the duo addresses the potential expansion of the tournament field beyond 68 teams, TV s role in Selection Sunday, and eliminating campus sites in favor of domed stadiums. This book serves as a nice primer for the 2012 tournament, but is far from a definitive history of the event. Photos.