1948 NAIA Men's Basketball Tournament


The 1948 NAIA Men's 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.
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, the NCAA Division I and the NCAA Division II tournaments. Indiana State won the NAIA in 1950.
The tournament was the first intercollegiate postseason to feature a black student-athlete, Clarence Walker of Indiana State under coach John Wooden. Wooden had withdrawn from the 1947 tournament because the NAIB would not allow Walker to play.

Awards and honors

Many of the records set by the 1948 tournament have been broken, and many of the awards were established much later:
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.