Kentucky not among top 16 NCAA seeds for now. Barnhart calls parity ‘remarkable.’
The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee released its preliminary top 16 seeds for the NCAA Tournament on Saturday, and the University of Kentucky missed the cut. The Wildcats were not among the teams projected to earn a top-four seed.
Louisville (20-3 overall, 11-1 ACC) was named a No. 2 seed (No. 7 overall) and was placed in the South Regional in Houston along with No. 1 overall seed Baylor.
The rankings were revealed during a CBS telecast which aired right before Saturday’s Kentucky-Tennessee game. During the broadcast the selection chair for the 2020 NCAA Tournament, Duke Director of Athletics Kevin White, said that Kentucky was among a handful of teams closely considered for a No. 4 seed.
University of Kentucky Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart is vice chairman of this year’s committee. After the seeds were revealed he spoke with members of the media via teleconference and discussed how parity played into the committee’s work.
“Eventually we have to pick 16 teams,” he said. “The top four seed lines, if we started the tournament today, that’s where we would sort-of land. And then there were some other teams that they mentioned on the bracket reveal show of Iowa and Kentucky and LSU that were in the conversations probably more closely to that four line. But the conversation was deep. The balance in the field is remarkable ... People are saying that it’s one of the more balanced, competitive brackets in history and I would tend to agree with that.”
The good news for Kentucky (18-5, 8-2 SEC): Selection Sunday is five weeks away, giving the Cats plenty of time to pad their resume before March Madness tips off.
The bad news: There might be too few potential quality wins left on the schedule for UK to make a significant upward move.
Kentucky beat Tennessee 77-64 in Knoxville on Saturday. After the game, Kentucky Coach John Calipari’s reaction to the preliminary bracket was muted.
“I didn’t expect anything,” the UK coach said. “It is what it is.”
On Friday, Calipari said the preliminary seeding could be seen as a way to hold the selection committee accountable later.
CBS analyst Jerry Palm projected the remainder of the tournament field after the official preliminary seeds were revealed Saturday. He speculated Kentucky would currently be a No. 5 seed and would be placed in the West Region in Los Angeles along with No. 1 seed Gonzaga.
Of UK, Palm said: “They’ve got a couple of nice wins but it’s the losses: It’s Utah, it’s South Carolina, it’s Evansville — which is the worst loss of anybody in the at-large pool. It’s going to take a lot to overcome that, but it’s hard to resume-build in the SEC because they don’t have the depth of quality teams like we have seen (like) last year.”
Barnhart is not allowed in the room when the committee discusses UK, so he could not comment when asked how the team’s resume was viewed. But NCAA Director of Media Coordination David Worlock, who has worked closely with the selection committee since 2006, echoed Palm’s analysis.
“From the positive standpoint for Kentucky were some of the performances in the non-conference (schedule). Specifically a road win at Texas Tech and a neutral-court win over Michigan State to go with the home win over Louisville, so they have three high-quality non-conference wins,“ Worlock said. “As far as the negative, were some of the losses. The loss to Evansville specifically was probably enough to keep them on the outside of the first four lines.”
But Worlock was more bullish than Palm when it came to the potential for Kentucky to improve its position.
“Along with some of the other teams that have been mentioned ... they certainly received consideration,” Worlock said. “There’s plenty of opportunity for all of those teams to get quality wins before the end of the season and potentially move up into that top-four line.”
Preliminary NCAA seeding
If the NCAA Tournament began today, here is how the NCAA Selection Committee would seed the top 16 teams region by region (overall seed in parentheses):
South Region
1. Baylor (1)
2. Louisville (7)
3. Seton Hall (11)
4. Auburn (13)
Midwest Region
1. Kansas (2)
2. Dayton (6)
3. Florida State (10)
4. Michigan State (16)
East Region
1. San Diego State (4)
2. Duke (5)
3. Maryland (9)
4. Butler (15)
West Region
1. Gonzaga (3)
2. West Virginia (8)
3. Villanova (12)
4. Oregon (14)
This story was originally published February 8, 2020 at 3:45 PM.
