1999 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship
| 1999 NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament |
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1999 Final Four logo
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| Season | 1998–99 | ||||
| Teams | 64 | ||||
| Finals site |
Tropicana Field St. Petersburg, Florida |
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| Champions |
Connecticut (1st title, 1st title game, 1st Final Four) |
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| Runner-up |
Duke (8th title game, 12th Final Four) |
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| Semifinalists |
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| Winning coach | Jim Calhoun (1st title) | ||||
| MOP | Richard Hamilton Connecticut | ||||
| Attendance | 720,685 | ||||
| Top scorer | Richard Hamilton Connecticut (145 points) |
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The 1999 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 11, 1999, and ended with the championship game on March 29 at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. A total of 63 games were played. This year's Final Four was the first—and so far, only—to be held in a baseball-specific facility, as Tropicana Field is home to the Tampa Bay Rays (then known as the Devil Rays).
The Final Four consisted of Connecticut, making their first ever Final Four appearance; Ohio State, making their ninth Final Four appearance and first since 1968; Michigan State, making their third Final Four appearance and first since their 1979 national championship; and Duke, the overall number one seed and making their first Final Four appearance since losing the national championship game in 1994.
In the national championship game, Connecticut defeated Duke 77-74 to win their first ever national championship, snapping Duke's 32-game winning streak, and scoring the biggest point-spread upset in Championship Game history. Duke nonetheless tied the record for most games won during a single season, with 37, which they co-held until Kentucky's 38-win seasons in 2011–12 and 2014–15. The 2007–08 Memphis team actually broke this record first, but the team was later forced to forfeit their entire season due to eligibility issues surrounding the team.
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