These 7 teams could ruin your NCAA tournament bracket

The ACC is widely regarded as the best conference in college basketball, and that is certainly reflected on the 2017 NCAA tournament odds. They’ll match this so-called “eye test” with data from a variety of sources to inform their votes come Selection Sunday. So who won and who lost with the committee’s release?

The No. 1 seeds up for grabs.

“It was nerve-wracking because when you saw Wisconsin an 8 seed, we were wondering what our seed was going to be”, swingman Scottie Lindsey said. Each team receives a seed, or ranking, in the tournament. Underseeded mid-majors with weak schedules (under 80th best in the country) have, as an entire class, made the Sweet 16 over 25 percent of the time since 2001-02 (7 of 25 similar teams).

Among those, there’s No. 2 Kentucky against No. 15 Northern Kentucky and No. 4 Florida State against No. 14 Florida Gulf Coast. The biggest threat will likely come in the form of the newly crowned ACC Tournament Champs, the Duke Blue Devils.

Villanova will be under extra scrutiny during its quest to repeat.

Every year on Selection Sunday, the bracket for the NCAA Tournament is released. The region also features a threatening No. 3 seed in Baylor. “How are we going to be tough right now?” Wright said it was “actually tougher” to face the play-in victor rather than receive a set No. 16 seed because of the lack of time to prepare.

The elder Pitino and his Louisville team are the No. 2 seed in the imposing Midwest, led by top-seeded Kansas. UCLA won that first meeting, 97-92, and it’d be fun to see how far both teams’ talented freshmen have come since that December 3 showdown at Rupp Arena. But this could be the year the Cyclones break through behind four experienced guards in Deonte Burton, Matt Thomas, Naz-Mitrou-Long and Big 12 Tournament MVP Monte Morris, who averaged 17.6 points, 6.3 rebounds and five assists over the three games.

A No. 1 seed has never fallen to a No. 16 seed in the men’s tournament. The NCAA and the television partners would have to figure out whether they want the college basketball crown jewel game and highest TV audience game of the year during the May sweeps where TV networks use ratings to fix advertising costs. “I like their chances”.

They’ll face the victor of a very tough, big conference 8-9 match when Miami and Michigan State face off. Since 1985, the No. 12 seed is 46-82 against No. 5 seeds. KenPom has the Golden Gophers ranked 33rd, eight spots lower than any other no. 5 seed.

For almost every other program not in a power conference, though, things were rough on Selection Sunday.

Watch out for: No. 5 Iowa State won its third Big 12 tourney in four years, beating a tough West Virginia squad in the final. Now they’ll play second-seeded Kentucky in Indianapolis on Friday. They’ll be among the most popular dark horses, but it’s for a good reason.

While you might look at the bracket and see four No. 1 seeds, one of them is actually the overall No. 1 seed and, as a result, is in the slightly easier bracket region. Last year they were assigned an 11 seed, but this year most are predicting they could get one of the top lines of the bracket. This is a trend. League schedules were imbalanced. These teams did not win their conference titles.

Or select the teams you believe will win the games, but a word of caution, that rarely works.

The women’s tournament will have 64 teams, with 32 automatic slots and 32 at-large picks revealed on Monday (Tuesday AEDT). They were No. 1 in the East in 1999, too, but fell to CT 77-74 in that national final. There was talk about there being a “soft bubble”, and things broke about as expected. The shortest team in the bracket is the Dayton Flyers. Nearly half got all 68.

In 19 of the last 20 NCAA Tournaments, a No. 2 seed has failed to make it past the second round.