Houston moves up to No. 2 seed in latest ESPN ‘Bracketology’ projections
With each win added to Houston’s current victory streak, the Cougars’ postseason resume also gets further enhanced.
In the latest edition of ESPN’s “Bracketology,” released earlier on Friday, Houston is projected to be the No. 2 seed in the South Region of the NCAA Tournament. The Cougars had been projected as a No. 3 seed in the previous “Bracketology” earlier this week.
Big 12 basketball power rankings: Hot Houston maintains grip on the top spot
The Cougars’ first-round opponent is No. 15 seed Towson, with the game to be played in Wichita.
Should the Cougars win that game, they would move on to the second round to face the winner of the first-round matchup between No. 7 UCLA and No. 10 Georgia.
Auburn, which is one of three teams to defeat Houston this season, is the projected top seed in the South, with the regional games taking place in Atlanta.
Houston is also projected to be either a No. 1 or No. 2 seed by the college basketball analytics website EvanMiya.com, which has the Cougars ranked seventh. This site uses a pair of metrics to determine a team’s NCAA Tournament seeding: Win Quality and Loss Quality.
Win Quality “measures how good your wins are based on the difficulty of those games,” while Loss Quality “measures how bad your losses are based on the difficulty of those games.”
The Cougars have a win quality total of 4.8 and a loss quality of -1.1 for an overall resume quality total of 3.7. That puts them at seventh, translating to either a No. 1 or No. 2 NCAA seed.
But Houston remains projected as a No. 3 seed by Jerry Palm on CBSSports.com. He has the Cougars in the East Region, playing No. 14 Jacksonville State in a first-round game at Denver, with that winner taking on the winner between No. 6 UCLA and No. 11 Pittsburgh.
Duke, which ended Houston’s season a year ago in the Sweet 16, is the projected No. 1 seed in the East, which will play its regional contests in Newark, N.J.
Houston (17-3, 9-0 Big 12 Conference) is currently riding a 13-game winning streak after a road win at West Virginia on Wednesday. The Cougars are back home Saturday to take on Texas Tech, and will also be at the Fertitta Center on Tuesday against Oklahoma State.
