Basketball is a wildly popular sport, but that wasn’t always the case. When the sport was invented by James Naismith at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, it was anything but wild and certainly not popular. In fact, it was rather boring because the “action was simply too slow and the scores too low.” The way the game was played, or not played, had a lot to do with it. There was no shot clock to liven things up and “players used two hands and kept both feet on the ground while shooting.” A lively game it was not, but when one player, Hank Luisetti, came into the picture, things began to change.Hank changed everything with his style, a style that utilized the “one-handed jump shot.” It was a style that was quickly imitated by other players. It was then the game of basketball began to evolve, but it didn’t stop with a single player. The Metropolitan Basketball Writers of New York City realized that the game could benefit from a competition in the form of a tournament. The game had come a long way since 1895 and by 1938 the writers offered up “an invitation-only tournament featuring the best teams in the country” to determine just who had the best team. Their organization was dubbed the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), but it wasn’t long before they were edged out by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA).The “NCAA had taken over as a governing body for all major college athletics” and although teams played championship games for both the NIT and the NCAA, there really wasn’t room for both. Unfortunately, there were many good teams, but initially only eight teams were able to participate in a tournament. Expansion was definitely in order and in 1951, that eight became sixteen, and in 1952 twenty-two to twenty-five could participate. Today, with the ever-evolving NCAA rules, we have a “modern total of 68 teams.” There was that UCLA streak, some classic games, and games that weren’t exactly classic, but certainly memorable. You’ll get to take a close look at some of them in this book!Swinging through time, you’ll get to read about the many changes in the game and its association with the NCAA. Sportswriter Ed Chay “coined the phrase ‘final four’ to describe the last four teams in the tournament that season [1975], and the name stuck.” Of course there’s not a basketball fan who doesn’t know about the Final Four and lives to experience “March Madness.” There’s a lot of history in this book and you’ll read about the beginnings of the game, you can take a look at some of the Final Four’s best games, those memorable moments, get a glimpse into the Final Four’s future, and you’ll learn much more about the “glory” of college basketball.This is an exciting glimpse in the the world of college basketball and the Final Four young fans will love. The book pops with full color action shots, but those black and white ones will send many readers down memory lane. Many books are loaded with statistics, but Matt Doeden makes the book come alive by going right into a game and describing the action. There are numerous informative sidebars that add many interesting vignettes to the read. For example, we learn about the racist hostility Texas Western faced with their all-black team in 1966. In the back of the book is an index, a glossary, source notes, and additional recommended book and website resources to explore.Age Range: 10 to 13 yearsGrade Level: 5 to 9SPECTACULAR SPORTS:The College Football ChampionshipThe Main EventTouchdownUltimate FightingThe World SeriesLong BallGoal!Swish!Daytona 500ScoreThis book courtesy of the publisher.