Road looks promising for Tar Heels
An unpredictable finish to the regular season has yielded an unpredictable NCAA men’s tournament field, where the few sure things – defending national champion UConn, to name one – are outnumbered by the question marks in every region.
For one, can two-time defending Big Ten champion and Midwest Region No. 1 Purdue follow in 2019 Virginia’s footsteps and go from last year’s historic loss to Fairleigh Dickinson to the program’s first Final Four since 1980?
Can the Big 12 and SEC justify having eight teams apiece in the tournament, tied for the most in the country, and send multiple teams deep into the bracket?
Can Arizona make a Final Four run and prolong the shelf life of the disappearing Pac-12 into April?
Before putting pen to paper and filling out our brackets, let’s review the winners and losers from Selection Sunday:
Winners North Carolina
It’s not just landing the No. 1 seed in the West Region that makes UNC one of the big winners from the tournament draw. Despite being the weakest of the four top seeds – joining Connecticut in the East, Houston in the South and Purdue in the Midwest – the Tar Heels are in what looks on paper to be the easiest region. UNC is joined at the top of the West by No. 2 Arizona, No. 3 Baylor, No. 4 Alabama and No. 5 Saint Mary’s, the tournament’s flimsiest top grouping. To get out of the first weekend, the Tar Heels will have to avoid losing to a No. 16 and then beat the winner of No. 8 Mississippi State and No. 9 Michigan State.
Illinois
Illinois was hovering between a No. 3 and a No. 4 heading into Selection Sunday but ended up on the No. 3 line in the East. That’s a just reward for the secondplace team from the Big Ten and owners of 14 combined Quad 1 and Quad 2 wins. After an extended tournament drought from 2014-20, the Illini are dancing for the fourth year in a row and a top-four seed for the third time under coach Brad Underwood. The next step will be advancing out of the opening weekend, something the program hasn’t done since reaching the championship game in 2005.
Virginia
The facts didn’t seem to support a bid for the Cavaliers. Virginia finished four games out of first in the ACC. The Cavaliers entered the postseason 55th in the NET rankings with just two Quad 1 wins. Overall, the record, the wins and the team’s performance didn’t warrant inclusion in the field; of the 92 pre-tournament brackets collected by Bracket Matrix, just seven had UVA as one of the 68 teams. It doesn’t make sense, but here we are anyway: Virginia is a No. 10 seed in one of the play-in games opposite Colorado State.
Purdue and Rick Barnes
Putting Purdue as the No. 1 seed in the Midwest and Tennessee as the No. 2 increases the odds that one of the Boilermakers and Tennessee advances to the Final Four. For the Boilermakers, a Final Four bid would be the program’s first since 1980 and help erase some of the bad vibes still lingering from last year’s loss.
The Volunteers have never been. Barnes made his first tournament appearance as a head coach at Providence in 1989 but has made the national semifinals just once across stops with the Friars, Clemson, Texas and Tennessee. That run came with point guard T.J. Ford and the Longhorns in 2003.
Losers Iowa State
Tennessee’s early exit from the SEC tournament combined with Iowa State’s dominant win against Houston to win the Big 12 championship had put the Cyclones in late contention for a No. 1 seed. Instead, however, ISU landed as the No. 2 seed in the East, joining a region led by top overall seed Connecticut, Illinois and No. 4 Auburn. That’s a very crowded and top-heavy side of the bracket that does no favors to any one of the favorites. But it’s particularly cruel to the Cyclones, who had the résumé to at least avoid being placed in the same region with the Huskies.
Trev Alberts
This will be an awkward few days for Alberts, the former Nebraska athletic director who just left for the same position at Texas A&M. Turns out the selection committee does have a sense of humor, if you look close enough: No. 9 A&M will take on the No. 8 Cornhuskers in the first round of the South Regional. That’s good news for the Aggies, one of the bubble teams heading into Selection Sunday, but not-so-great news for Alberts, who was largely able to dodge questions on his way out of Lincoln.
Big East
There was a disconnect between how the Big East was viewed during the regular season – as maybe the second-best conference in Division I – and how the league was seen by the selection committee. The Big East sent just three teams into tournament play in the Huskies, South Region No. 2 Marquette and Midwest Region No. 3 Creighton, leaving St. John’s, Providence and Seton Hall on the outside of the field.
The conference had averaged over five bids per year in the previous nine tournaments.