NCAA Tournament Bracketology update: Houston drops into East Region
It's only November, but the NCAA men's basketball tournament committee continues to insist that nonconference games are just as important as February conference matchups when it comes to selecting the 68-team field.
With that in mind, the Houston Cougars loss to Auburn is clearly impacting their projected seed in Joe Lunardi's latest NCAA Tournament Bracketology predictions.
Lunardi currently has Houston as a No. 3 seed in the East, a region that includes No. 1 UConn and No. 2 Alabama. That would not be a great landing spot for the Cougars, especially considering that the region final will be played in Newark, New Jersey — a three-hour drive from UConn's campus.
Previous iterations of Bracketology have featured Houston as a No. 1 seed — a spot they can quickly get back to with a win over No. 8 Alabama next week in Las Vegas.
One of the many challenges that comes with conference expansion are fewer nonconference games. The tournament committee has historically had a big nonconference sample size to compare Big 12 teams vs. SEC teams vs. ACC teams vs. Big Ten teams.
With a 20-game Big 12 schedule this season, Houston is playing just 11 nonconference games — two fewer than last season. The loss to Auburn places an even greater importance on the Alabama game, in addition to the other two games the Cougars will play at the Players Era Tournament in Las Vegas.
Here are the latest NCAA Tournament Bracketology predictions for the top-four seed lines from Lunardi and ESPN, with Big 12 teams in bold:
No. 1 seeds: Kansas (Midwest), Gonzaga (West), Auburn (South), UConn (East)
No. 2 seeds: Purdue (Midwest), Tennessee (West), Iowa State (South), Alabama (East)
No. 3 seeds: Kentucky (Midwest), Baylor (West), Duke (South), Houston (East)
No. 4 seeds: Creighton (Midwest), Arizona (West), Marquette (South), North Carolina (East)
Lunardi has eight Big 12 teams making the field. The SEC and Big Ten lead the way with 10 teams apiece.
Ben Sherman has been covering the sports world for most of his journalism career, including 17 years with The Oregonian/OregonLive. One of his favorite memories was covering the 1999 Fiesta Bowl - the first BCS National Championship Game - at Sun Devil Stadium.