 | |||||
| Season | 1992–93 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Teams | 64 | ||||
| Finals site | Louisiana Superdome New Orleans, Louisiana | ||||
| Champions | North Carolina Tar Heels (3rd title, 7th title game, 11th Final Four) | ||||
| Runner-up | Michigan Wolverines (vacated) (5th title game, 6th Final Four) | ||||
| Semifinalists |
| ||||
| Winning coach | Dean Smith (2nd title) | ||||
| MOP | Donald Williams (North Carolina) | ||||
| Attendance | 715,246 | ||||
| Top scorer | Donald Williams (North Carolina) (118 points) | ||||
| |||||
The 1993 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament involved 64 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 18, 1993, and ended with the championship game on April 5 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A total of 63 games were played.
North Carolina, coached by Dean Smith, won the national title with a 77–71 victory in the final game over Michigan, coached by Steve Fisher.[1] Donald Williams of North Carolina was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. The most memorable play in the championship game came in the last seconds as Michigan's Chris Webber tried to call a timeout with his team down by 2 points when double-teamed by North Carolina.[2] Michigan had already used all of its timeouts, so Webber's gaffe resulted in a technical foul. Michigan subsequently vacated its entire 1992–93 schedule, including its six NCAA Tournament games, after it emerged that Webber had received under-the-table payments from a booster.
In a game that featured two great individual battles (one between Bobby Hurley and Jason Kidd, and the other between Grant Hill and Lamond Murray), two-time defending champion Duke was upset in the second round by California.
This year's Final Four was the closest the tournament came to having all four top seeds advance to the semifinals until all four did advance in the 2008 tournament. Indiana was the only top seed not to make it out of its regional; it was defeated by the 2-seed Kansas, in the Midwest regional finals. This tournament is also notable for the uneven distribution of first-round upsets. While there were no upsets in the East, one 'minor' upset in the Midwest (9th seed Xavier defeated 8th seed New Orleans; Xavier was the betting favorite at all sports books in Las Vegas), and one 'medium' upset in the Southeast (11th seed Tulane beat 6th seed Kansas State), the West featured three remarkable upsets amongst the top 5 seeds, with a 12, a 13, and a 15-seed advancing to the second round in that region. At the time, 15-seed Santa Clara's victory over 2-seed Arizona was only the second such upset, and following the 2023 tournament, is one of only eleven times that a 15-seed defeated a 2-seed since the tournament field expanded to 64 teams (In 2018, UMBC became one of only two 16-seeds to defeat a 1-seed, ousting Virginia 74-54, with Fairleigh Dickinson's upset of Purdue occurring five years later.).
In this tournament, the Louisiana Superdome was the only site in which the game clock counted down in whole seconds, not tenths of seconds, in the final minute of each period.