Despite its name, the ECAC is not a traditional athletic conference, but rather a loosely organized sports federation for colleges and universities in the northeastern United States.
Although a number of at-large bids still existed, the process for selecting the field for the 1975 NCAA tournament included many second-place conference teams and threatened to exclude independent schools in the northeastern United States, which had no end-of-season conference tournament to play in and therefore no automatic bids.
With no conventional athletic conferences yet in existence in the Northeast, the ECAC began to organize its Division I basketball tournaments in 1975, allowing Northeastern independents to retain their independent status while still having an opportunity to play in an end-of-season tournament offering an automatic bid.
The Army-Seton Hall semifinal game took place at Yanitelli Center, Jersey City, NJ.
[13] New England The 1977 New England Tournament's semifinal games contrasted with one another greatly: Holy Cross, led by freshman guard Ronnie Perry, played a hard, physical game – with 45 free throws in the second half, 24 by Holy Cross and 21 by Connecticut – to defeat Connecticut 89-77, while Providence, led by senior guard Joe Hassett, found its offense lacking and used tough defensive play to overcome Fairfield 44-31.
The much-anticipated championship game that followed – a rematch of the December 1976 Colonial Classic final played at the Boston Garden, in which Holy Cross had handed Providence one of only three losses the Friars suffered all season on a game-winning last-second shot by the Crusaders' Chris Potter – was played before a sold-out crowd at the Hartford Civic Center and was one of the greatest games in the eight-season history of the ECAC Division I tournaments.
With less than a minute to play and his team behind, Holy Cross's Michael Vicens stole the ball along his own end line and raced down the court to score on a reverse dunk.
[14] Southern Note: The St. Bonaventure-Syracuse semifinal game was held at Manley Field House, Syracuse, NY.
Georgetown-Old Dominion semifinal game was played in Cole Field House, College Park, MD.
In 1981, it held its first Division III-only postseason regional invitational men's basketball tournaments for ECAC teams not invited to the NCAA Division III men's basketball tournament, and these have occurred annually ever since.