With apologies to the East, West and Midwest, the South Region of this year’s NCAA Tournament figures to be the place to be, and that’s ultimately in Atlanta, where the region's top four teams will play March 23 and 25 for a shot at the Final Four.
The No. 1 overall seed in the field of 68 – the Kentucky Wildcats -- landed in the South Region on Sunday, and they also feature the tournament’s premier player in freshman power forward Anthony Davis.
The region comes with championship pedigree and a collective 19 national titles between Kentucky (seven), Indiana (five), Duke (four) and last year’s defending national champion Connecticut (three).
It boasts the mid-major darling of last year’s tournament, Virginia Commonwealth, along with this year’s potential version, Wichita State. Not only that, it pits the two against each other in the first round.
The South Region has intrigue and a chance for No. 2 seed Duke and No. 1 Kentucky to meet three days shy of the 20-year anniversary of Christian Laettner’s shot to beat the Wildcats in the 1992 regional final. Or maybe the Sweet Sixteen features a rematch of the Duke-UNLV classic from the year before.
This region also has a snake in the grass for the 32-2 Wildcats, who could face one of only two teams they lost to all year. Kentucky would love some Sweet Sixteen revenge for Christian Watford’s 3-pointer at the buzzer Dec. 10 for Indiana, which drew three “ahs” and three “unbelievables” from Dick Vitale as Hoosier fans swarmed the Assembly Hall floor after Indiana’s 73-72 win.
Even before that, in the second round, Kentucky could draw No. 9 seed Connecticut and a shot at the team that knocked the Wildcats out of the Final Four last year.
CBS lead analyst Clark Kellogg likes Kentucky’s chances against the Huskies and really, anybody else in the South Region.
“UConn has struggled a bit,” Kellogg said. “They’ve got some personnel that could be a challenge for Kentucky, but they’ve not played that well to this point. Baylor is extremely talented and an interesting team, and Duke has played at a pretty good level most of the year. But I still think with Kentucky at its best or close to it and those teams at their best or close to it, Kentucky is still clearly the favorite there.”
The Wildcats were one of the three No. 1 seeds named Sunday night to lose this week in their conference tournaments, along with Syracuse, the No. 2 overall seed in the tournament, and North Carolina, the No. 3 overall seed, which lost to Florida State Sunday afternoon in the ACC tournament at Philips Arena.
Sunday’s only winner among the four top seeds was Michigan State, which earned a No. 1 seed by beating Ohio State in the Big Ten tournament.
But both national championships the Tar Heels have won under Coach Roy Williams came after they’d lost in the ACC tournament, in 2005 and 2009. After winning ACC tournament titles in 2007 and 2008 to earn No. 1 seeds, the Tar Heels lost in the Elite Eight and Final Four respectively.
“Hopefully we can build off this and use it to drive us through the tournament,” said North Carolina forward Tyler Zeller, following Sunday’s loss to the Seminoles.
The Tar Heels also expect to have ACC defensive player of the year John Henson back healthy next week from his left wrist injury.
Williams left Atlanta Sunday figuring North Carolina would land in the South Region and possibly be back in two weeks to play at the Georgia Dome. But the selection committee elected to give Kentucky a chance to come to Atlanta and put the Tar Heels on a path to St. Louis in the Midwest Region, a city much closer to Lexington, Kentucky than Chapel Hill.
St. Louis is also only about 4 ½ hours from Lawrence, Kansas, the home of the Midwest’s No. 2 seeded Jayhawks, who could face North Carolina and their former coach Williams in the regional final.
“The first thing we’ve got to keep in mind was Kentucky is the true No. 1 seed,” selection committee chairman Jeff Hathaway said during the CBS selection show Sunday. “And what we tried to do was put those teams in their natural region. We debated this extensively, but at the end of the day we felt that Atlanta was the natural region for Kentucky.”
Otherwise, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of debate for Hathaway and the selection committee in a year many figure was weak for “bubble teams.” N.C. State got in as an 11th seed in the Midwest Region, as expected after coming within two points of North Carolina in the ACC tournament semifinal Saturday. Five ACC teams made it, which trailed the Big East (9), the Big 12 (6) and the Big Ten (6).
The biggest point of contention over bubble teams seemed to be that Iona was chosen and not Drexel, the regular season champion of the Colonial Athletic Association.
“They had a very good non-conference strength of schedule,” Hathaway said of Iona. “They were a 44….Drexel was well over 200. (Iona) had some good top 100 wins. Very good basketball team, very good on offense. We think we got that one right. Obviously a lot of people will debate it and that’s what makes it fun.”
