1987 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament

The 1987 NCAA Men's Division I 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 12, 1987, and ended with the championship game on March 30 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A total of 63 games were played.

Indiana, coached by Bob Knight, won the national title with a 74-73 victory in the final game over Syracuse, coached by Jim Boeheim. Keith Smart of Indiana, who hit the game-winner in the final seconds, was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player. The tournament also featured a "Cinderella team" in the Final Four, as Providence College, led by a then-unknown Rick Pitino, made their first Final Four appearance since 1973. This was also the last tournament in which teams were allowed to have home court advantage: Syracuse (2E), DePaul (3MW), Arizona (10W) and UAB (11SE) all opened the tournament playing on their home courts. The 1987 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament was also the first tournament to utilize the Three-Point Shot.

Locations

First and Second Rounds

• Atlanta, Georgia (Omni Coliseum)
• Birmingham, Alabama (BJCC Arena)
• Charlotte, North Carolina (Charlotte Coliseum)
• Indianapolis, Indiana (Hoosier Dome)
• Rosemont, Illinois (Rosemont Horizon)
• Salt Lake City, Utah (Jon M. Huntsman Center)
• Syracuse, New York (Carrier Dome)
• Tucson, Arizona (McKale Center)

Later Rounds

Teams

Bracket

East region

Southeast region

Midwest region

West region

Final Four

Announcers

• Brent Musburger and Billy Packer
• Dick Stockton and Tom Heinsohn
• Verne Lundquist and Billy Cunningham
• Mike Patrick and Larry Conley
• Gary Bender and Hubie Brown
• Tim Brant and Bill Raftery

Trivia

• The 59th Academy Awards show was broadcast on the ABC network at the same time as CBS network broadcast of the championship game between Indiana and Syracuse. Oscars show host Chevy Chase quipped later in the evening, "Is the game over yet?" The Oscars show would subsequently be scheduled around the tournament broadcast by moving it later in April for two years.

• Angelo Pizzo and David Anspaugh, nominated for Oscars for the movie Hoosiers and Indiana University grads, skipped the Oscars to watch IU win the championship game against Syracuse.

• Tenth seeded LSU reached the Elite Eight for the second straight year without being favored to win a game. They had previously reached the Final Four as an 11-seed in 1986, losing to eventual national champion Louisville Cardinals. The Tigers fell a missed shot at the buzzer short of another trip to the Final Four.

• This marked the first time that CBS Sports used "One Shining Moment" during their tournament epilogue.

• The three losing coaches in the Final Four all eventually won national titles. Jerry Tarkanian was the first to do so, winning in 1990 with UNLV defeating the Duke University Blue Devils 103-73. The following year 1991, Duke defeated UNLV in the National Semi-final game to end UNLV's chance to finish undefeated. Rick Pitino followed in 1996 with Kentucky, defeating Jim Boeheim's Syracuse team in the final. Boeheim would finally break through in 2003 with Syracuse by defeating the Roy Williams coached University of Kansas Jayhawks. Williams left Kansas to coach the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the 2003-2004 season. Coach Williams would win the first of two national championships in 2005 as the Head Coach of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

• There were no teams from the Metro Conference in the tournament. The conference allowed Memphis State, which was serving an NCAA tournament ban that year, to compete in its conference tournament, which it won by defeating the defending 1986 National Champion Louisville Cardinals by the lopsided score 75 to 52 on the Cardinals' home court, Freedom Hall in Louisville, KY. The NCAA basketball tournament committee said as the conference had committed its automatic berth would go to its conference tournament winner, the conference lost its automatic berth that year, and no other schools received an at-large entry.