Among the things we learned the past few days in Las Vegas: UCLA didn’t get penalized unduly by losing to Arizona in Saturday’s Pac-12 championship game. But USC put itself in serious jeopardy with its casual approach against Arizona State, while enabling the Sun Devils to get into the tournament.
UCLA stayed in the West, a No. 2 seed playing in Sacramento, when the NCAA Tournament brackets were revealed Sunday. And it certainly seemed like the Bruins probably weren’t going to be a No. 1 seed in any event unless something dramatic happened on the eve of the pairings reveal.
As it turned out, Purdue narrowly avoided being upset by Penn State in the Big Ten championship game Sunday, while Houston was smacked around by Memphis in the American Athletic Conference title game. But both were No. 1 seeds, Houston No. 2 overall (behind Alabama) and Purdue No. 4 (behind Kansas).
“We considered about six or seven teams” as top seeds, said selection committee chairman Chris Reynolds, Bradley University’s vice president for intercollegiate athletics, in an interview with CBS. “But at the end of the day, those four teams were the teams we selected.”
The team whose fans might have had a reason to gripe? Kansas, which wound up the No. 1 seed in the West region and not the Midwest, where the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight will be held in Kansas City. Instead of an easy drive from Lawrence, Kan., Jayhawks fans will have to budget for a trip to Las Vegas should their team get past the first round.
And consider the angst of Arizona fans, whose team got a No. 2 seed as well but was placed in the South, with a regional semifinal and final in Louisville. Arizona had 70 to 80 percent of the crowd in Saturday night’s Pac-12 championship game in ‘Vegas, but it won’t have that same wave of noise on its side should it get to the Sweet 16.
Meahwhile, an early look suggests UCLA also has a decent chance of getting back to T-Mobile Arena the week after next, assuming that the…
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