The 1978 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament involved 32 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division Icollege basketball. It began on March 11, 1978, and ended with the championship game on March 27 in St. Louis, Missouri. A total of 32 games were played, including a national third place game. The process of seeding the bracket was first used in this tournament. Sixteen conference winners with automatic bids were seeded 1 through 4 in each region. At-large teams were seeded 1 through 4 in each region separately. There were in fact only eleven true at-large teams in the field, as the remaining five were conference winners with automatic bids and seeded The practice of distinguishing between automatic and at-large teams ended with this edition; the expanded field of forty in the 1979 tournament was simply seeded from one to ten in each of the four regions. Led by head coach Joe B. Hall, Kentucky won its fifth national title with a 94–88 victory over Duke, coached by Bill Foster. Wildcat forward Jack Givens scored 41 points in the finale and was named the tournament's most outstanding player. The bracket's biggest upset came in the first round, when little-heralded Miami defeated defending champion Marquette 84-81 in overtime. The victory was even sweeter for Miami Redskins fans as former Marquette coach Al McGuire had earlier strongly criticized the NCAA for potentially matching Marquette against Kentucky in the second round, with Marquette being given a first-round opponent in Miami that was supposedly not even worthy of providing an adequate tune-up game. Unranked Cal State Fullerton pulled off two upsets, first over 4th ranked New Mexico and then over top-10 San Francisco. The loss was especially painful for New Mexico as the regional semifinals and finals were held on the Lobos' home court in Albuquerque. CSUF then almost upset Arkansas in the West Regional final, losing by 3 points. In each of the three games, the Titans overcame second-half double-digit deficits. In the Arkansas game, they cut a big deficit to 1 and had the ball with 14 seconds left. But Arkansas' Jim Counce stole the ball from Keith Anderson and drove down to hit a clinching layup. In the Mideast regional final, Kentucky knocked off top-seeded Michigan State, led by freshman Earvin "Magic" Johnson. This was the only time in a 4-year period that Magic's team did not win its final game of the playoffs and hence the championship. The Final Four games at St. Louis Arena were not played on the arena's official floor. Water damage to it forced the NCAA to borrow the floor from Indiana University's Assembly Hall in Bloomington. This was the fourth and last year for a 32-team bracket; the field expanded to forty teams in 1979 and 48 in 1980, all seeded. The 64-team field debuted in 1985, eliminating byes for the top seeds. The third-place game at the Final Four was last played in 1981.
Locations
For the second time in six years, St. Louis was chosen as the host city for the Final Four, the eighth city to host multiple times. There were no new host cities for the first time since 1950, but one new venue, Market Square Arena, marking the first time since 1940 that the tournament returned to Indianapolis, now a common site of Final Fours. The tournament did mark the last time it would be held at McArthur Court, as it has not returned to Eugene since. It was also the last time the regionals would be held in historic Allen Fieldhouse, something it did eight times.
