A first for everything

Sporting News, The, Jan 25, 1999

Fifty years ago this week, the country's first national college basketball poll appeared in print, topped by a team not unfamiliar to hardcore fans but certainly not among the game's elite.

The Brilliant Billikens from Missouri received 69 first-place votes out of 93 ballots to lead runner-up Kentucky by a wide margin read The Associated Press story of the sport's first "coast-to-coast" poll. St. Louis U. was no slouch in 1949. The team was unbeaten at the time, had won the NIT championship the season before and was led by All-American and future Hall of Famer Ed Macauley.

Kentucky, which would go on to finish 36-3 and win the NCAA Tournament that season, was second in the poll of 30 teams. But what caught our eye was the No. 8 school: Hamline University, a small school in St. Patti, Minn., that now plays Division III basketball. Hamline was no slouch back then, either. The Pipers went 29-1 that season and won their second of three NAIA titles.

AP's Top 10 of January 18, 1949:

1. St Louis
2. Kentucky
3. Western Kentucky
4. Minnesota
5. Oklahoma A&M
6. San Francisco
7. Illinois
8. Hamline
9. Villanova
10. Utah