1980 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament


The 1980 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament involved 48 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 6th, 1980, and ended with the championship game on March 24th at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. A total of 48 games were played, including a national 3rd place game.
Louisville, coached by Denny Crum, won the national title with a 59–54 victory in the final game over UCLA, coached by Larry Brown. Darrell Griffith of Louisville was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.
Structurally speaking, this was the 1st tournament of the modern era. For the first time:
  1. An unlimited number of at-large teams could come from any conference.
  2. The bracket was seeded to make each region as evenly competitive as possible.
  3. All teams were seeded solely based on the subjective judgment of the committee.
In the 2nd year the tournament field was seeded, no #1 seed reached the Final 4. This would not happen again until 2006 and also occurred in 2011.
UCLA would forfeit its second place in the standings in 1981 after players representing the school were declared ineligible by the NCAA.

Locations

1st & 2nd Rounds

Regional Sites and Final 4

For the 1st time, Indianapolis was the host of the Final 4; the next 6 held in the city were held at either the RCA Dome or at Lucas Oil Stadium. The Midwest Regional at The Summit marked the 4th different venue to host Tournament games in the city of Houston; a 5th location, NRG Stadium, was introduced in 2008. The city holds the record for the most different venues used. Only Indianapolis has used 4 venues and could conceivably use 20% if its current NBA arena, Bankers Life Fieldhouse is used. 3 different venues hosted games for the first time, all on college campuses; of the 3, only Purdue's Mackey Arena has not repeated as a host.

Teams

Bracket

* – Denotes overtime period.

East region

Midwest region

Mideast region

West region

Final Four

Announcers