The 2002 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament involved 65 schools playing in single-elimination play to determine the national champion of men's NCAA Division I college basketball. It began on March 12, 2002, and ended with the championship game on April 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. A total of 64 games were played.
This was the first year that the tournament used the so-called "pod" system, in which the eight first- and second-round sites are distributed around the four regionals. Teams were assigned to first round spots in order to minimize travel for as many teams as possible. The top seeds at each site were:
- Sacramento: Oregon (M2), USC (S4)
- Albuquerque: Arizona (W3), Ohio State (W4)
- Dallas: Oklahoma (W2), Mississippi State (M3)
- St. Louis: Kansas (M1), Kentucky (E4)
- Chicago: Georgia (E3), Illinois (M4)
- Pittsburgh: Cincinnati (W1), Pittsburgh (S3)
- Washington, D.C.: Maryland (E1), Connecticut (E2)
- Greenville: Duke (S1), Alabama (S2)
Previously, the eight first-/second-round sites would be assigned to a specific regional, and the two teams from any given site that made it to the Sweet 16 would have to face each other in that round. If the previous scheme had been in effect for this tournament the assigned sites would likely have been:
- West Region
- Sacramento (#1 Cincinnati)
- Albuquerque (#2 Oklahoma--the Sooners were barred from matching up with a #1 seed from the Big 12--in this case Kansas--until the Final Four)
- South Region
- Greenville (#1 Duke)
- Dallas (#2 Alabama)
- Midwest Region
- St. Louis (#1 Kansas)
- Chicago (#2 Oregon)
- East Region
- Washington, D.C. (#1 Maryland)
- Pittsburgh (#2 Connecticut)
Maryland, coached by Gary Williams, won the national title with a 64-52 victory in the final game over Indiana, coached by Mike Davis. Juan Dixon of Maryland was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Player.
Read more about 2002 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament: Teams, Bids By Conference, Broadcast Information
Famous quotes containing the words men, division and/or basketball:
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs,
And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“In this world, which is so plainly the antechamber of another, there are no happy men. The true division of humanity is between those who live in light and those who live in darkness. Our aim must be to diminish the number of the latter and increase the number of the former. That is why we demand education and knowledge.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)