Teams 32 | ||
Finals Site Municipal Auditorium
Kansas City, Missouri Champions Louisville (Ky.)
(1st title, 1st title game,
1st Final Four) Runner-Up Indiana State
(2nd title game,
2nd Final Four) Semifinalists Hamline (Minn.)
(3rd Final Four)
Xavier (Ohio)
(1st Final Four) Chuck Taylor MVP Duane Klueh
(Indiana State) | ||
The 1948 NAIA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament was held in March at Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Missouri. The 11th annual NAIA basketball tournament featured 32 teams playing in a single-elimination format. The championship game featured Louisville beating Indiana State 82-70.
Contents
The only school to have won national titles in both the NAIA and NCAA Division I is Louisville. Uniquely, Indiana State has finished as the National Runner-up in the NAIA (1946 and 1948), the NCAA Division I (1979) and the NCAA Division II (1968) tournaments. Indiana State won the NAIA in 1950.
In 1948 the NAIA allowed black student-athletes to compete in the National Tournament.
Awards and honors
Many of the records set by the 1948 tournament have been broken, and many of the awards were established much later:
1948 NAIA bracket
3rd place game
The third place game featured the losing teams from the national semifinalist to determine 3rd and 4th places in the tournament. This game was played until 1988.