Nova earns top seed; ’Cuse out
For pure drama, best wait ’til the shots start flying.
For sheer excitement, Selection Sunday belonged to Northwestern.
Though it was no surprise when that school’s name popped into the NCAA
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Tournament bracket, it was a reminder that, yes, this is March Madness — that time of year where anything can happen. The Wildcats, longtime losers in the Big Ten, were officially invited to the tournament for the first time in school history, and the group-hugging, selfie-taking reaction from the players (and others) when their name came up showed how much the accomplishment really meant.
“When I came here four years ago, it was a belief in a day like today,” said coach Chris Collins, whose team won 23 games on its way to the tournament.
Another set of Wildcats — the ones from Villanova — were given the tournament’s top overall seed. The defending champions were joined by Kansas, North Carolina and Gonzaga on the “1” line — a quartet that produced very little in the way of head scratching.
With the brackets set, the action begins tomorrow and Wednesday with openinground games that will include matchups between the last at-large teams invited into the draw: No. 11 seeds Providence vs. Southern California and Kansas State vs. Wake Forest.
The tournament gets into full swing Thursday, with the Final Four set for April 1 and 3 in Phoenix. Villanova, which won the title last year on a buzzer-beating jump shot by Kris Jenkins, will open its quest for back-toback titles against the winner of an opening-round game between New Orleans and Mount Saint Mary’s.
“I want the guys to enjoy it tonight, and then tomorrow, we’re just one of 68 teams,” ’Nova coach Jay Wright said.
Though Kansas was the overall second seed, it opened as the favorite in Las Vegas, at 8-1. North Carolina and Villanova were next at 9-1, followed by Gonzaga, Duke and Kentucky at 10-1.
Overall, the bracket produced more small quibbles than true blockbusters.
If there was any debate about the top, it was about whether Duke (27-8) really belonged as a No. 1 instead of a No. 2, which is where it ended up. The Blue Devils won four games in four nights at the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament, and have beaten the rival Tar Heels (27-7) twice. But Mark Hollis, the chair of the selection committee, beat back that debate quickly, telling the commentators on CBS (who dragged out the bracket reveal for more than a half hour) that Duke entered the week as a No. 4 seed.
And though the Blue Devils kept winning over the weekend, “they got stopped on the way by teams that won both their regular-season and conference tournaments (Kentucky and Arizona) and they were never compared to teams on the No. 1 line,” Hollis said.
Teams that didn’t make it off the bubble included Syracuse and Illinois State.
Syracuse was vulnerable because of its 84th ranking in the RPI. Still, the Orange ouster was notable because of the outcry when Jim Boeheim’s team made the field with a similarly mediocre resume last year — then made it all the way to the Final Four.
SU-Greensboro in NIT
Four days after Boeheim angered an entire city by saying there was “no value” in the Atlantic Coast Conference holding its postseason tournament in Greensboro, N.C., the Orange were matched up against UNC Greensboro in the first round of the National Invitation Tournament.
Among the final few teams left out of the NCAA tournament, top-seeded Syracuse (18-14) will host the eighth-seeded Spartans (25-9) in the opener at the Carrier Dome tomorrow night.
Reggie Minton, chair of the selection committee, said the NIT did not pair up the teams on purpose and didn’t have Boeheim’s comment in mind when the bracket was set.
California, Iowa and Illinois State are the other No. 1 seeds in the 32-team field.