Maple hardwood, the very foundation of the Final Four, is ingrained with basketball's rich history

Down on hands and knees in the Alamodome, workers lurched forward to generate enough leverage to slide one large wood panel alongside another.

Nearby was a 15-pound sledgehammer at the ready for a few swings into the panel sides – a plastic block absorbing the impact and providing protection to the precious wood – to wedge them into place.

It took the crew of more than a dozen men and women nearly four hours to complete the immaculately painted puzzle. This work, along with a similar grind in Florida, creates one of the grandest stages in sports: The college basketball courts used at the men’s and women’s Final Four.

The final games of the NCAA tournaments over the next several days take place on painstakingly crafted courts, pieces of Americana built by Connor Sports from wood harvested in the same region as the postage-stamp Michigan town the company calls home. Men’s teams in San Antonio and the women in Tampa, Florida, can earn places in history on the same wood that has been the sport’s foundation for a more than a century.

That wood – hard maple – is a thread connecting seemingly everything in basketball. Big shots. Epic games. Crushing losses. The highest levels of NBA and international play, through college and down all the way to grade-school games on lowered baskets.

“The tradition of the game of basketball was created on hardwood,” said Zach Riberdy, Connor Sports’ marketing director. “The squeak. ... I can still grimace at some of the floor burns I got diving for loose balls. That’s something you’re never going to be able to replace. It’s so unique to our game. It’s tough to put into words just how much of an impact one tree has on the landscape of the game.”

History lives in those maple grains.

There’s Bobby Plump’s famed shot in 1954 that gave Milan High School (coached by one Marvin Wood) the Indiana state championship, inspiring the movie “Hoosiers” that recreated the moment with Jimmy Chitwood’s last-second release at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse.

The wood? Northern hard maple, still in place more than seven decades later at the venerable “Old Barn.”

At Duke, in famously rowdy Cameron Indoor Stadium, three NCAA title-winning teams have played on the court made by Ohio's Robbins Sports Surfaces and installed in 1997. There’s a chance for a fourth, too, with the Blue Devils in San Antonio.

And there’s tons of March Madness lore. Kris Jenkins’ title-winning 3 for the Villanova men in 2016. Arike Ogunbowale’s buzzer-beater for the Notre Dame’s women title two years later. Virginia's men returning from the 16-versus-1 upset against UMBC for a redemptive 2019 title.

And last year, UConn becoming only the third men's program to win a repeat title since UCLA’s run of seven straight from 1967-73.

All on hard maple.

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