College basketball had one of those frozen moments in 1993, a split second to which every fan of the sport had an immediate and emotional response.
Dean Smith was seconds away from his second national championship at North Carolina when Michigan's Chris Webber ruled out any chances of the Fab Five winning their first as he called for a timeout the Wolverines didn't have.The technical foul and the free throws that followed didn't really matter. Webber had become a name to be forever linked with calling a timeout and Smith was on the short list of coaches who had won it all more than once.
The year started so bleak for college basketball with the death of Iowa forward Chris Street in an accident involving a truck with a snow plow.
It seemed the rest of the season was spent watching Jim Valvano pass before our eyes as cancer attacked all of him but his spirit. The coach who won the NCAA title with North Carolina State in 1983 and then fell to the lows of probation before rebounding in a television career, died in April, after establishing a cancer fund-raising organization in his name.
On the court, the Fab Five played for the second and last time. Indiana's Calbert Cheaney was impressive enough to be named consensus national player of the year.
Duke couldn't win its third in a row, falling to California in the second round of the NCAA tournament. For a few moments it seemed hard to believe a Final Four would be played without the Blue Devils, who had been to five in a row. The loss to a team led by freshman Jason Kidd gave Duke a 17-2 tournament record with point guard Bobby Hurley, who graduated as the NCAA's career assist leader.
The Final Four did have Michigan for the second straight season and the Wolverines' Fab Five Class of `95 was back as sophomores. They beat Kentucky 81-78 in overtime in a pulsating semifinal after North Carolina had beaten Kansas 78-68.
The title game was North Carolina's buttoned-down approach against the baggy shorts of Michigan. It lived up to all the billing and came down to the final 11 seconds when Webber, who had gotten away with a walk at the other end of the court, called for the timeout that didn't exist.
"You can call it lucky, you can call it fortunate, but it still says NCAA championship," Smith said.
As North Carolina celebrated on the court in the Super Dome, Webber explained his mistake, then cried in his father's arms minutes later.
"I just called a timeout and we didn't have one and it probably cost us the game," Webber said. "If I'd have known we didn't have any timeouts left, I wouldn't have called a timeout."
California St.-Bakersfield won the Division II title and Ohio Northern was the champion of Division III. Hawaii Pacific won the NAIA's Division I and Willamette, Ore., won Division II.
Greg Guy of Texas-Pan American was the Division I scoring leader at 29.3 points per game, the second straight year the leader was under 30.
Webber, Cheaney, Hurley, Anfernee Hardaway of Memphis State and Jamal Mashburn of Kentucky were an easy pick as the All-America and none came back, even though only Cheaney and Hurley were seniors. Webber opted for the NBA after his sophomore year, and Hardaway and Mashburn were juniors.
Rodney Rogers of Wake Forest also left after his junior year and 7-6 Shawn Bradley of Brigham Young played just one year as a collegian. He spent the last two years on a Mormon Church mission in Australia and decided to come back straight to the NBA.