Final Four Fact February: 1987 Welcomed One Shining Moment & The 3-Point Shot

The 1987 NCAA Tournament introduced several changes that forever changed the face of March Madness.

The 1987 Final Four, in a variety of ways, marks the culmination of the first modern-era NCAA Tournament. March Madness expanded to 64 teams two years earlier, resulting immediately in a national championship that likely would have been impossible before. In 1986, it launched a Final Four run that would have absolutely not been possible prior to 1985.

Once again, the 1987 Final Four featured a Cinderella story that occurred as a direct result of the field’s expansion, with a young coach, Rick Pitino, guiding Providence to New Orleans. And, with New Orleans welcoming the Final Four back to the Superdome for the second time in five years, 1987 began to usher in the era of the semifinals being played in football stadiums.

From 1981 through 1986, there were as many Final Fours played in arenas as there were in the years after the 1987 Final Four, until the last such semifinal in 1996.

Advancements in TV production, camera quality, and the magnitude of the atmosphere in the Superdome give replays of the 1987 Final Four a feel more like a modern-day championship than any of the arena Final Fours of the same era.

College basketball was also in its second year of using a 45-second shot clock, which improved the pace of play — a fact made most evident in the significantly higher-scoring National Championship Games in 1986 and 1987, compared with the low-scoring scraps of the three years prior.

And 1987 was the first NCAA Tournament to use the 3-pointer, a dramatic alteration that fundamentally changed the game forever. Check out my deep dive on the impact of the 3-pointer on March Madness, which prominently features the 1987 Tournament and UNLV sharpshooter Freddie Banks.