The Rise of College Baketball

                            The 1899 Kansas Men's Team, one of the earliest College Basketball teams

The rise of the game of basketball in the late 1800's and early 1900's was largely due to YMCA's in different areas of the United States and Canada's willingness to sanction games and have them played on their courts. However, within a decade of the YMCA beginning to promote the sport, they withdrew their willingness to have games played their because they often drew large and rowdy crowds that the YMCA believed was not a part of their ultimate goal. After this the game was still played by other amatuer associations, but it struggled to find the same compounded popularity it found at the YMCA. This led to a massive surge in popularity of college basketball, games played between 2 teams of student representing their respective university.

 It is believed that the first college to play a game against an outside team was Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1893. This game was played against the local Nashville YMCA team (while the YMCA still fielded teams)

The first 5-game between 2 schools was played in 1895 between Hamline University and Minnesota A&M, which was won by A&M 9-3. The first 5-on-5 game is believed to have been played between the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa in 1896. Chicago won 15-12, coached by Amos Stagg, who learned the game from James Naismith at the Springfield YMCA. By 1900, the game of basketball had spread to many school all throughout the United States.

Due to the concerning frequency of injuries to college football players, in 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt called for the creation of a governing body for all college sports. This led to the creation of the Intercollegiate Athletics Association of the United States (IAAUS). In 1910, the IAAUS was renamed the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which it is still known as today.

The first tournament for NCAA teams was the National Invitational Tournament in 1938, but it was not sanctioned by the NCAA. A year later the NCAA started it's on tournament, the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament (popularly known today as March Madness) which quickly overtook the NIT in popularity due to accusations of game rigging and point shaving in the NIT.