The University of Oregon basketball team has history on its side.

The last time the Ducks -- then popularly known as the Webfoots -- reached the Final Four, they went on to secure the national championship.

"Eugene went berserk Monday night," The Oregonian wrote in the wake of UO's dominating 46-33 victory over Ohio State on March 27, 1939, in the inaugural NCAA basketball tournament. The paper continued:

Throngs of madly cheering students and townspeople paced the streets. Automobile horns created a din that made talking, even shouting, impossible. The street department gave up. Traffic lights were turned off, because no one gave them a glance.

Thousands of screaming and yelling students could not be stopped by any force short of machine-gun fire, and that wasn't tried. Fire crackers and small bombs added to the warlike turmoil.

The result that sparked this "warlike turmoil" in Eugene had been far from a sure thing. The Webfoots had swept through the Pacific Coast Conference during the regular season and then won their first two games in the NCAA Tournament, over Texas and Oklahoma. But the nation's basketball powers were on the East Coast. UO, also known as the "Tall Firs," had gone east early in the season to prove its mettle, losing two of its nine games on the tour. Ohio State had taken the Big Ten conference crown and crushed Wake Forest and Villanova to win the NCAA Tournament's East Regional.

The national-championship game was played on Northwestern University's campus in Evanston, Illinois, with the sport's inventor, Dr. James Naismith, in attendance. Before the game, as a tribute, Northwestern staged an exhibition played under Naismith's original rules, which included nine players per team.

Over in Europe, Madrid was on the verge of falling to Franco's fascist forces and Mussolini was declaring before a crowd of thousands that Italy's quest for a worldwide empire could not be stopped. But Europe was a long way away. The Oregon press focused not on overseas traumas but on the Webfoots' reputation, pointing out that in each of the basketball team's five losses during the season it didn't have its "No. 1 combination fit for action."

This was a fair assessment. UO's starting five -- Bobby Anet, Wally Johansen, Slim Wintermute, John Dick and Laddie Gale -- blended their talents perfectly. Anet and Dick typically led the team's scoring via a new style of play popular on the West Coast called the "fast break," or, more commonly, "Let's run 'em into the floor." But coach Howard Hobson pointed out that both the offense and defense revolved around his towering 6'8" center.

"Wintermute, to my mind, is easily the outstanding center I have ever seen in the northwest," Hobson said. "There isn't anything he can't do."

Hobson declared his starting five healthy and ready for the championship showdown, but fans worried that UO's cagers were coming into the game at a disadvantage thanks to a "grueling series of train rides little more than 24 hours back of them." The team had trekked to Northwestern's Patten Gymnasium from San Francisco, while Ohio State came from nearby Philadelphia.

Heavy rain met the Webfoots at the Chicago train station, making them feel at home. Despite the long train trip, they exuded confidence. "[T]he Webfoots," wrote reporter Charles R. Buxton, "prowled the hotel lobby in an effortless manner, indicating they again have their ground legs and are ready for the basketball business at hand." Bruxton was right: they were ready. The video below shows UO's tournament games against Oklahoma and Ohio State.

For the first 18 minutes of the championship game, The Oregonian wrote, UO's starting five "gave 4,000 Midwest fans and some 400 basketball coaches a whirlwind exhibition of crushing offensive power combined with just-as-effective defensive tactics."

Ohio State made a series of attempts to push back into the game, but Oregon met the challenge each time, racing to the NCAA national title -- and setting off the festivities in Eugene.

"Cars loaded with as many as 15 or 20 cheering basketball fans paraded the streets, tying up traffic," The Oregonian's Eugene correspondent wrote. "As estimated crowd of 10,000 persons attended the impromptu downtown celebration."

The reporter added that classes had been canceled for Tuesday.

The Webfoots' victory 78 years ago was indeed historic, but if the Ducks go all the way in 2017, it will be an even bigger deal.

That's because, despite the wild celebration in Eugene's streets, March Madness didn't yet exist in 1939. In fact, the NCAA Tournament wasn't even the premier college basketball tournament. The best of the best sought a trip not to Evanston, but to New York City's famed Madison Square Garden to participate in the National Invitation Tournament.

A week before the NCAA title game, Long Island University won the NIT, besting Loyola Chicago before 18,000 fans to complete an undefeated season. The New York Times heralded the Long Island Blackbirds as the "team that never made a mistake." The newspaper of record didn't send a reporter to the Oregon-Ohio State game.

-- Douglas Perry