Duke was named the No 1 overall seed for March Madness on Sunday, with Arizona, Michigan and Florida named top seeds in the West, Midwest and South regions, respectively.
San Diego State, Indiana, Oklahoma and Auburn were among the most notable omissions, with Miami (Ohio) sneaking into the field as a No 11 seed. They face a First Four game Wednesday against SMU in Dayton, Ohio.
The RedHawks amassed a 31-1 record but had the 339th-ranked strength of schedule and were one of the last teams in the field.
Meanwhile, Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida would love a repeat of last season when all four No 1s made it to the Final Four.
Michigan’s drop of one spot to the overall No. 3 the result of the Wolverines’ loss to Purdue moments before the brackets were revealed, according to tournament selection chair Keith Gill.
The tournament starts Tuesday with other play-in games, including one pitting bubble teams and No. 11 seeds Texas and North Carolina State. The national champion will be crowned at the Final Four in Indianapolis on April 6.
The Duke Blue Devils were named the No 1 overall seed for March Madness on Sunday
The Auburn Tigers – coached by Steven Pearl – missed out on a place in the NCAA tournament
Auburn missed out after having 16 losses but the third-best strength of schedule. The snub drew predictable blowback from Bruce Pearl, their former coach and father of their current coach, who was working for CBS and said ‘they played the toughest schedule in the country and I don´t know if they were rewarded for it.’
Even with those snubs, the Southeastern Conference led the way by placing 10 teams in the field of 68, four short of its record from last year.
The Big Ten followed with nine, the ACC and Big 12 with eight apiece – an unsurprising result in an era of massive conference expansion and NIL compensation drawing top players to the biggest spenders.
The Gators (26-7) are the defending champion, trying to repeat their back-to-back titles from 2006-07. Last season, Florida was part of an all-No. 1 Final Four – the first time that had happened in 17 seasons.
Gill confusingly said Miami (Ohio) was not the last at-large team in the bracket, even though it was ranked in the 1-68 lineup behind bubble teams North Carolina State, Texas and SMU. Those three teams also rated above Miami in some of the key metrics.
The 31 wins must have meant something. Gill said the committee looked hard at how injuries would impact teams.
No team suffered more, both on the bracket and the court, than North Carolina, which is a No. 6 seed after losing Caleb Wilson to a broken right thumb. JT Toppin´s season-ending knee injury was also a factor in Texas Tech´s No. 5 seeding.
Asked how the NCAA’s seeding principles played a role in moving teams around in the bracket, Gill pointed to the First Four meeting between NC State and Texas the committee would have liked to avoid because it is a rematch of a game they played in the Maui Invitational in November.
The defending champions, Florida, were named the No 1 seeds in the south region on Sunday
Yaxel Lendeborg and the Michigan Wolverines are the team to beat in the Midwest region
He said nothing about placing No. 2 seed Houston in the South, where it could play the regional final in its hometown – normally something the NCAA shies away from.
The game could be against Florida in what would be a rematch of last year´s national championship game.
The committee weighed the Big Ten final in moving Michigan down one notch and moving Purdue from a 3 to a 2 seed, but didn´t seem to pay as much attention to the action in the Big East.
St. John’s beat UConn by 20 in that conference final but remained where most bracketologists had them, at No. 5, and with a cross-country trip this week to San Diego to play Northern Iowa. UConn stayed at No. 2 where it had been predicted all along.
