2009 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament


The 2009 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament involved 65 teams playing in a single-elimination tournament that determined the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I men's basketball national champion for the 2008–09 season. The 71st annual edition of the tournament began on March 17, 2009, and concluded with the championship game on April 6 at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan.
The University of North Carolina defeated Michigan State to become the champion. It was the Tar Heels 5th title, and 2nd under Roy Williams. The 2009 tournament was the first time the Final Four had a minimum seating capacity of 70,000, and by having most of the tournament in the February Sweeps of the Nielsen Ratings due to the digital television transition in the United States on June 12, 2009, this was the last NCAA basketball tournament, in all three divisions, to air on analog television.
Prior to the start of the tournament, the top ranked team was Louisville in both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN/USA Today Coaches' Polls, followed by North Carolina, Memphis, and Pittsburgh. Only the Tar Heels of North Carolina were the regional winners and played in the Final Four. The Tar Heels completed one of the most dominant runs in the tournament's history by winning each of their games by at least twelve points.
For the first time since seeding began, all #1 to #3 seeds made it into the Sweet 16, and for the third consecutive time, all #1 seeds made the Elite Eight.
Four schools made their NCAA tournament debut, all respective conference champions: Binghamton, Morgan State, Stephen F. Austin, and North Dakota State, a school in its first season of Division I eligibility.

Tournament procedure

Sixty-five teams were selected for the tournament. Thirty of the teams earned automatic bids by winning their conference tournaments. The automatic bid of the Ivy League, which does not conduct a postseason tournament, went to Cornell, its regular season champion. The remaining 34 teams were granted "at-large" bids by the NCAA Selection Committee.
Two teams play an opening-round game, popularly called the "play-in game". The winner of that game advances to the main draw of the tournament as a 16 seed and plays a top seed in one of the regionals. The 2009 game was played on Tuesday, March 17, at the University of Dayton Arena in Dayton, Ohio, as it has since its inception in 2001.
All 64 teams were seeded 1 to 16 within their regions; the winner of the play-in game automatically received a 16 seed. The Selection Committee seeded the entire field from 1 to 65. SEC commissioner Michael Slive served his last year as chairman of the committee.

Schedule and venues

The following are the sites that were selected to host each round of the 2009 tournament:
Opening Round
  • March 17
  • *University of Dayton Arena, Dayton, Ohio
First and Second Rounds
Regional semifinals and Finals
National semifinals and championship

Automatic bids

The following teams were automatic qualifiers for the 2009 NCAA field by virtue of winning their conference's tournament.
ConferenceSchoolAppearanceLast bid
ACCDuke33rd2008
America EastBinghamton1stNever
Atlantic 10Temple27th2008
Atlantic SunEast Tennessee State8th2004
Big 12Missouri22nd2003
Big EastLouisville35th2008
Big SkyPortland State2nd2008
Big SouthRadford2nd1998
Big TenPurdue23rd2008
Big WestCal State Northridge2nd2001
ColonialVCU8th2007
C-USAMemphis22nd2008
HorizonCleveland State2nd1986
Ivy LeagueCornell4th2008
MAACSiena5th2008
MACAkron2nd1986
MEACMorgan State1stNever
Missouri ValleyNorthern Iowa5th2006
Mountain WestUtah27th2005
NortheastRobert Morris6th1992
Ohio ValleyMorehead State6th1984
Pac-10USC15th2008
PatriotAmerican2nd2008
SECMississippi State10th2008
SouthernChattanooga10th2005
SouthlandStephen F. Austin1stNever
SummitNorth Dakota State1stNever
Sun BeltWestern Kentucky21st2008
SWACAlabama State3rd2004
WACUtah State18th2006
West CoastGonzaga12th2008

Listed by region and seeding


Bracket

Results to date
All times in U.S. ET.

Opening Round Game – Dayton, Ohio

Winner advanced to Midwest Regional vs. Louisville.

Midwest Regional – Indianapolis, Indiana

West Regional – Glendale, Arizona

East Regional – Boston, Massachusetts

South Regional – Memphis, Tennessee

Final Four – Ford Field, Detroit, Michigan

Game summaries

Midwest Region

of Michigan State was the Midwest regional most outstanding player. He was joined by Spartan teammates Kalin Lucas and Travis Walton, Louisville's Earl Clark and Kansas's Cole Aldrich on the NCAA tournament All-Midwest Regional team.

First round

To play the top-seeded Louisville Cardinals in the first round, Morehead State defeated Alabama State 58–43, with the Eagles keeping the Hornets without a lead the entire game. This marked the first time either team had played in the tournament in five years; the Eagles had not played since 1984. Morehead State fell to Louisville 74–54, the 100th time a 1 seed beat a 16 seed in the tournament since seeding began. However, the Eagles managed to keep the game close until halftime, when Louisville led by only 2 points. In the second half, the Cardinals began to apply their signature fullcourt pressure, forcing turnovers and outscoring Morehead State 22–6 at the beginning of the half. Leon Buchanan's 17 points for the Eagles were not enough to upset Louisville, whose top scorers, Samardo Samuels and Terrence Williams, scored a combined 28 points. Morehead State has not beaten Louisville in 52 years until 2011.
In two overtimes, the Siena Saints beat the Ohio State Buckeyes 74–72. Ohio State had the advantage of playing an hour from their campus, and received 25 points, nine rebounds, and eight assists from Evan Turner. The Saints made 6 out of 23 3-pointers and had 22 turnovers. Accordingly, Siena trailed for most of the game, but scored the last four points in regulation to force overtime. At the end of the first overtime, Siena's Ronald Moore drained his first 3-pointer to force a second overtime. With 3.9 seconds left in that overtime, he hit a second three from the same location to give the Saints a late 2-point lead. In an attempt to send the game into a third overtime, Turner shot a 15-footer immediately afterwards, but he missed it. This was Siena's fifth appearance in the tournament, after beating Vanderbilt University in 2008 as a 13 seed.
The Arizona-Utah matchup was not as close. The Fifth-seeded Utah Utes were upset by the twelfth-seeded Arizona Wildcats, one of the last teams to make it in the tournament and a questionable entry, by a score of 84–71. The Utes closed the lead to two with roughly five minutes left in the game, but the Wildcats' answer was a 10–1 run. Utah's Luke Nevill committed two fouls less than four minutes into the game and scored only 12 points. Nic Wise of Arizona, meanwhile, led the team with 29 points, with 21 in the second half. Tyler Kepkay led the Utes with a team 19 points in his embarking performance.
The Cleveland State-Wake Forest game was an even larger upset. In their second bid in the tournament, the Cleveland State Vikings shocked the Wake Forest Demon Deacons 84–69. This 15-point win ties for third-greatest victory margin for a 13 seed over a 4 seed. Wake Forest, once ranked first in the country, had 16 turnovers in the matchup, compared to six for the Vikings. James Johnson of the Demon Deacons scored 22 points, although this could not compensate for a substandard offense. Their scoring leader, Jeff Teague, finished with 10 points, half his average. For these reasons, Wake Forest never obtained a lead, while Cleveland State sank three consecutive 3-pointers in the early minutes of the game.
For the first time in 19 years, Dayton advanced to the second round of the tournament with a win over West Virginia 68–60. This also ended West Virginia's first-round winning streak, which had lasted since 1992. Chris Wright led the Dayton Flyers with 27 points, a career high, while also chalking up 10 rebounds. Charles Little also aided the Flyers with 18 points. Darryl Bryant, who led West Virginia with 21 points, shot two consecutive three-pointers to bring Dayton's lead to 48–47 with 11:02 minutes left in the game. However, that was the closest the Mountaineers had to a lead outside the beginning of the game.
In their first eligible year, North Dakota State appeared in the tournament, facing defending champion Kansas. The three-seeded Kansas Jayhawks staved off the fourteenth-seeded Bison's upset bid with an 84–74 victory. Ben Woodside shined with 37 points for the Bison, his sixth game of the season with at least 30 points. However, Sherron Collins and Cole Aldrich proved too much for North Dakota State, accounting for 65 percent of the Jayhawks' points with 32 and 23 respectively.
The tenth-seeded USC Trojans demolished the seventh-seeded Boston College Eagles by a score of 72–55, helped by Taj Gibson's 10-for-10 shooting from the field, tied for the second-best NCAA tournament field-goal shooting performance in history. He led the team with 24 points and recorded six rebounds, five assists, and three blocks. Dwight Lewis also added 20 points for the Trojans. After leading 34–30 at halftime, the Eagles scored just a single field goal during one 13-minute stretch, as part of a 23.1 shooting percentage in the second half.
Robert Morris, the region's 15 seed, was blown away by second-seeded Michigan State 77–62. The game was tied with 4:44 left in the first half, but then the Colonials went almost 20 minutes without scoring a single point. The Spartans took advantage of this for a 21–0 run that sealed the game in their favor. The Colonials' Jeremy Chappell was the only team member to score double-digit points with 11, and he also led the team with six rebounds, two steals, and three blocks. Raymar Morgan was the Spartans' leading scorer with 16 points.