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Frie wrote that many association coaches were skeptical of a coast-to- coast tournament, but the influential cadre finally convinced a wary and weak NCAA administration in October to sanc- tion the event, with one stipulation: The coaches association would assume all the financial risk. Competing tournaments The public and media didn't learn about the first NCAA tournament until Dec. 14, 1938, with Ohio State coach Harold Olsen making the official announcement from Columbus. Olsen took a swipe at the NIT without mentioning the writers' tourna- ment, declaring the NCAA competition would determine "America's undisputed college basketball champion." As Frie tells the story, Olsen revealed an eight-team format, but by the time the tournament started on the weekend of March 10-11, 1939, there had been a few additional "play-in" games. Under the plan, there were two four-team section- als, later renamed regionals. The region- als were divided into teams from east and west of the Mississippi River, with a coaches association subcommittee in each region selecting the participating teams. There were no rules dictating how that should be done. The tournament semifinals were set for March 17-18, with New York or Philadelphia serving as the eastern site and Kansas City, Denver or Los Angeles as the western location. Where the championship game would be played was still to be determined. When the tournament officially started, the re- gionals were held at the Palestra and San Francisco. The title game, Frie wrote, was "at Northwestern Patten Gymnasium in con- junction with the NABC convention in Chicago. The theory was that Chicago was centrally located and likely would be suitable neutral ground for the two final- ists – especially if the teams, as seemed entirely possible, were from the opposite coasts. "The committee's mistake arguably was not formalizing the 'play-in' process and making it the same in all eight districts, essentially making the NCAA tourna- ment a 16- or 32-team event from the start. That would have flaunted how much more national and democratic it was than the New York writers' tourna- ment." Olsen's Buckeyes were the surprise of the tournament. Entering with a 14-6 record, second-worst among the partic- ipants, Ohio State upset Wake Forest and Villanova before losing to Oregon, the tournament favorite with a 26-5 Unless you are an old-time Penn State basketball fan or know a lot about athletics at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, you may not have heard of Herm Sledzik. Sledzik was the first man to receive a scholarship to play basketball for Penn State, but his schol- arship in 1949 was unique. Between 1929 and 1949, Penn State de-emphasized all sports, and schol- arships were elimi- nated. In 1949, the board of trustees re- instated 30 full scholarships for football but limited the basketball team to tuition-only grants for three players. A group of Penn State alumni in Indiana County added a few wrin- kles that skirted the NCAA rules to come up with a full "scholarship" for Sledzik, a coal miner's son who was an outstanding basketball player for tiny Elders Ridge High School in the county. Because of overcrowded housing conditions at Penn State that year, freshmen were dispersed to branch campuses and a few other state-sup- ported colleges. Sledzik spent his freshmen year playing for Penn State's Dubois campus basketball team. "I'll never forget getting my first check for room and board," he remembered. "I don't know whether this was officially paid by Penn State or by the alumni." What the Indiana County alumni did next was work out a deal with the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity. Fraternity member Harry Graham was a Sledzik contemporary but didn't know him. However, their fathers were coal min- ers who worked in different mines and knew each other. Harry told his frat brothers that Sledzik was going to be a big basketball star and convinced them to bring him into the fraternity and pay for his room and board for three years. The athletic department paid for tuition and books, fulfilling the "scholarship." Sledzik was a starter on Penn State's 1952 NCAA team and captain of the 1953 squad that finished 15-9 but just missed the 22-team NCAA tourna- ment. After service in the Army as the Korean War was ending, Sledzik passed up a possible NBA career with the Baltimore Bullets, who had offered him a $4,000 contract when he gradu- ated. Instead, he returned to Penn State to get his graduate degree, be- coming the basketball team's fresh- man coach. After seven years of high school coaching, Sledzik was hired by IUP in 1963 as head basketball coach, where he produced winning teams until be- coming the athletic director in 1970. He never left IUP, serving in several positions until his retirement in 1993. –L.P. SLEDZIK Sledzik a key figure in Penn State's hoops history

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