1979 NCAA Division I Basketball Championship Game
| 1979 NCAA Tournament Championship Game | |||||||||||||
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| National Championship Game | |||||||||||||
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| Date | March 26, 1979 | ||||||||||||
| Arena | Special Events Center | ||||||||||||
| Location | Salt Lake City, Utah | ||||||||||||
| Referee(s) | Gary Muncy, Lenny Wirtz, Hank Nichols |
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| Attendance | 15,410 | ||||||||||||
| United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||
| Network | NBC | ||||||||||||
| Announcers |
Dick Enberg, Billy Packer, and Al McGuire |
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The 1979 NCAA Division I Basketball Championship Game was the final of the 1979 NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament and determined the national champion for the 1978–79 season. The game was held on March 26, at the Special Events Center (now the Jon M. Huntsman Center) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah.
In the game, the Indiana State Sycamores of the Missouri Valley Conference faced the Michigan State Spartans of the Big Ten Conference. The Sycamores entered the contest undefeated for the season, while the Spartans had six losses. Spartans guard Magic Johnson and Sycamores forward Larry Bird faced each other for the first time; the pair developed a rivalry in the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the 1980s.
Michigan State won 75–64 to claim the school's first national championship in men's basketball. The 1979 NCAA tournament final had the highest Nielsen ratings of any game in the history of American basketball.
The Sycamores were not ranked in the Associated Press (AP) or United Press International preseason polls, and coaches in their Missouri Valley Conference (MVC) did not pick them to win the league. The team, which had been coached by Bob King in 1977–78, was led by senior forward Larry Bird, who had averaged 30.0 points per game during the previous season (second in NCAA Division I basketball) and been named an All-American in 1978. Indiana State's lineup also featured Carl Nicks, a junior guard who was returning to the school after spending his sophomore season at Gulf Coast Community College. However, the four starters from the 1977–78 team other than Bird had graduated. Before the start of the season, King suffered a heart attack and left the job; he was replaced by Bill Hodges. The Sycamores won their first game versus Lawrence University by a score of 99–56, and followed that performance by traveling to Purdue and winning by 10 points. Bird scored 40 points in Indiana State's next contest, a 74–70 victory at Evansville. That began a streak of seven games in which Bird scored over 30 points, including a 48-point effort against Butler.
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