The All-College Basketball Classic was a
college basketball event that was played during the winter holidays in
Oklahoma City from 1935 to 2016. The final events were held at the
Chesapeake Energy Arena. The All-College followed a tournament format until 2000, it was replaced by non-conference games featuring the
Oklahoma Sooners and
Oklahoma State Cowboys. The All-College Basketball Classic preceded the
NCAA,
NIT,
NAIA, and
NBA tournaments.
The All-College Tournament was originally conceived by
Henry P. Iba, the coach at
Oklahoma A&M, and Bus Ham, sports editor of The Oklahoman. The original purpose of the tournament was to increase interest in high school basketball in Oklahoma, and thereby to improve the quality of the college teams in the state. The first tournament included 16 teams from Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, and was played at
Classen High School; Oklahoma A&M won the first title game over
Tulsa, 40–17. Two years later the tournament had grown to 32 teams.[1] When the publisher of The Oklahoman made known its intention to end its sponsorship, the Oklahoma City All Sports Association was formed in 1957 to take over the tournament.[2]
The size, sponsorship, and success of the tournament varied over the years, shrinking to four teams in 1981.[3] In 1999 it had what one report called "one of its worst fields ever" with three small college programs along with
Oklahoma.[4] The last traditionally-formatted tournament was played in 2000, with Oklahoma beating SMU 79–78 in the title game. Beginning in 2001, the event switched to a "classic" format, with a pre-determined schedule and no title game.[5] In 2013 the event included women's basketball for the first time, presenting a doubleheader featuring the Oklahoma State men's and women's teams each playing a game against an out-of-state foe.[6]
^Darrell Morrow,
"Basketball Tourney Aids OKC Economy"Archived 2016-03-09 at the
Wayback Machine, The Journal Record, December 18, 1992. ("Originally, it was a 32-team affair and it was played in high schools throughout Oklahoma City, then it was reduced to 16 teams and then it was reduced to eight. It was eight teams when we took over in 1957. In 1981, it became a four-team tournament because of the difficulty with the schools being restricted to playing a limited number of games.")