The origins of the 3-point line go all the way back to 1945. Howard Hobson, the famed Oregon coach who won the first NCAA tournament in 1939, conducted an experiment. He had Fordham play Columbia in an exhibition game, with a twist: He added a 3-point line. So on Feb. 7, 1945, a Fordham player named John Cahill unofficially hit “the world’s first 3-point field goal,” as a reporter wrote. Hobson, described as a “progressive young strategist,” had studied 23 games at Madison Square Garden during the 1944-45 season while stationed nearby with the Army. His observations convinced him that the game needed the 3-point line. Not only would it create excitement, but it would reintroduce the art of the “long shot” and, most important of all, ease the congestion and brutishness the game had taken on.