What might have been the first-ever college basketball game was played Feb. 9, 1895, between host Hamline University and the Minnesota State School of Agriculture in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Ray Kaighn, who organized the contest as Hamline's athletic director, learned the game from James Naismith, who invented the sport in 1891. Under the rules set by Naismith, teams fielded nine men on the court and shot at peach baskets. Minnesota, which later became part of the state university system, earned the 9-3 victory.
In the early days of college basketball universities commonly scheduled games against local YMCA programs. Geneva College of Pennsylvania, which has adopted the "birthplace of college basketball" title, recorded its first game against the Brighton YMCA on April 8, 1893. Vanderbilt can also make a case as the first. The school played a game two months earlier on Feb. 7, 1893, against a local Nashville YMCA team.
But the contest between Hamline and Minnesota A&M 121 years ago is the first college basketball recorded between two universities. A year after Minnesota won, the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago were the first to play an intercollegiate game using five-man lineups.
