Joel Embiid has a stress fracture in his back and will miss the Big12 tourney
as well as the first weekend of the NCAA tourney. At least, that is what Kansas is saying right now. My bet is that he will probably miss even more time than that, but Kansas wants to sound optimistic about him so the NCAA Selection Committee doesn't screw them on seeding. If they knew he would not be back this season, it probably downgrades Kansas severely. But, the prospect of him coming back could give the committee cover to still give Kansas a high seed.
Regardless, the selection committee has to punish Kansas, right? Lets say the Jayhawks lose in the first round of the Big 12 tourney, do you drop them to a #3 or even to a #4 seed? I suppose, if they win the Big 12 tourney, you could give them a #2 seed, but if their non-Embid results are not impressive, I think they have to be a #3 or lower.
In other seeding news, Lunardi (I know, I know -- he's just guessing) has his brackets set for a potential Duke (#2 in East) vs Stanford (#10 in East) game in the 2nd round of the tourney. Probably too delicious for the committee to not make that happen. Remember when K had to play Snyder at Mizzu a few years ago? This would be waaay worse for K, I suspect, as he thinks of Johnny as a son.
-Jason "we can merge this into one of the other seeding threads in a bit -- but I wanted the Embiid news to get some attention from the board for a little bit because it is quite significant" Evans