1991 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament - Miscellaneous

Miscellaneous

• Duke's 79-77 win over UNLV in the Final Four became one of the biggest upsets in tournament history. UNLV's juggernaut 1990-91 squad ranked #2 on ESPN Classic's Who's #1? for Best Teams Not To Win a Title. UNLV was undefeated entering the 1991 tournament, which as of 2010 has not been duplicated.(St. Joseph's went undefeated in the 2004 regular season, finishing 27-0, but lost in their conference tournament before the NCAAs. Indiana is the last team to win the championship undefeated in 1976).
• This was Duke's fourth consecutive Final Four trip, the first team to achieve such a feat since UCLA. Since freshmen were not eligible at the time of UCLA's run, Duke's Greg Koubek became the first player to play in four Final Fours, a record matched by Duke teammates Christian Laettner and Brian Davis the next year.
• For the first time in tournament history a 15-seed defeated a 2-seed. Richmond defeated Syracuse 73-69. Since then this has happened five additional times: in 1993, Santa Clara defeated Arizona 64-61; in 1997, Coppin State defeated South Carolina 78-65; in 2001, Hampton defeated Iowa State 58-57, and in 2012 Norfolk State defeated Missouri 86-84 and Lehigh defeated Duke 75-70 that same day.
• For bracketologists, this tournament is notable for several reasons. The first is the upset-heavy opening round, which led to every seed number except 16 being represented by at least one team in the second round. The East region, in particular, featured first round victories by seeds 9, 10, 12, 13, and 15. Two 11's and a 14-seed advanced in the other regions. The second round is equally remarkable because there were no upsets in this round whatsoever. The combination of these two anomalies led to an unprecedented occurrence in which a 10 (Temple), an 11 (Connecticut), and a 12-seed (Eastern Michigan) advanced to the Sweet Sixteen without any of the teams pulling off consecutive upsets. The reason for this was that the first round successes of 15-seed Richmond, 14-seed Xavier, and 13-seed Penn State led to Temple, Connecticut and Eastern Michigan (respectively) being considered favorites for their second round matchups.
• This was the first NCAA Tournament to feature all four North Carolina-based Atlantic Coast Conference teams: North Carolina, North Carolina State, Duke and Wake Forest.
• This tournament featured three play-in games before the tournament field was announced. The results were: Saint Francis, PA (NEC) defeated Fordham (Patriot) 70-64, Coastal Carolina (Big South) over Jackson State (SWAC) 78-59, and NE Louisiana (Southland) over Florida A&M (MEAC) 87-63. These are not opening round games and the losers are not credited with a NCAA tournament appearance.