I'm kind of surprised Duke is the overall #8 seed but it does make geographic sense as stated earlier...
My thoughts on the region: I don't look at efficiency/rpi/sos when it comes to tourney. It is all about the matchup and I don't like our matchups... Assuming Duke can beat Lehigh (don't feel as confident as I did in previous years about the first game, could see an '08 kind of game, you never know), I don't feel too good about it for Duke IF they have to play Xavier/Baylor/UNLV. All of those teams have multiple guys who can break you down off the dribble, which has shown to give Duke quite a bit of trouble.
I think we are in pretty good shape for the first weekend. Just have to see who else survives after that. I am happy we are not in Syracuse region.
We may have a game on our hands next Friday. Lehigh's is rated roughly equivalent to Clemson/VT, and lost away games to St. John's and MSU earlier this season by a combined 14 points. Obviously we should win, but it might not be a cakewalk.
After the 1 and 2 seeds they use 3 and 4 to balance the top 4 across the regions, and then the rest is by s-curve/wherever they fit
we'll have to wait and see where Baylor is in the s curve to see if we really got screwed
we had the 1 and 6 overall seeds, which means that the sum of the 3 and 4 seeds in our bracket should be 27 (ie 11 and 16 overall) to make the total as close to 34 as possible.
we'll see
April 1
I'm more worried about the Lehigh game than the game after, assuming we make it to that point. Lehigh is very underrated. This Duke team is ripe to be taken out early, especially if Ryan is still out.
Bingo. As much as the NCAA loves geographical selection and RPI, they love potential stories even more. It would be a hype dream to have Duke and KY rematch as 1/2 with a trip to the Final Four on the line, 20 years after The Shot to win The Game, etc.
I like our half of the bracket...except for Baylor. They are a tough, athletic team. They're a legit 3 seed, so it's not like we got hosed, they're just a tough team. I'll worry about KY if we make it to the Elite Eight and they're still standing, too.
"Hardcore Brackets" on TruTV right now, aka the revealing of what went down, featuring Charles Barkley being hilarious and knowing nothing about college basketball. I'll be interested to see how UK/Duke/Baylor happened.
Baylor could easily go down in Round 1 that kid from SD St. can really play.
I still hate how the 1/2 seeds go down. The fact that we are the #6 overall seed and somehow they justify that by letting UK get the easiest 4 seed and that makes our bracket weighted correctly even though you probably have the #2 2 seed and #1 3 seed. Someone will have to update the S-curve but I would assume they are #9 or else I'd much wather face Marquette.