What NCAA seed will Kentucky get? Basketball’s No. 1-ranked bracketologist weighs in.
With Selection Sunday quickly approaching, college basketball’s top-ranked “bracketologist” is a bit more bullish on Kentucky’s seeding possibilities than many other NCAA Tournament prognosticators.
Dave Ommen, who runs the Bracketville website dedicated to projecting NCAA Tournament seeds, has been deemed by BracketMatrix.com as the most accurate predictor of the March Madness field. With a total of 133 bracket sites in its rankings, that’s no small feat.
Ommen, who started the Bracketville site before the 2008-09 season and has been a bracketologist for NBC Sports since 2010, pegs Kentucky as the highest-ranked No. 3 seed in his latest projection, which was posted Thursday morning.
That’s quite a bit better than the overall average on BracketMatrix.com, which has UK four lines lower as the top-ranked No. 4 seed going into this week’s Southeastern Conference Tournament. Though there are some outliers — ESPN’s Joe Lunardi (ranked No. 55 by BracketMatrix) currently has UK as the final No. 2 seed, for instance — a majority of the most recent brackets collected by the website place the Cats as a No. 4 seed.
According to Ommen, who has been closely following the NCAA’s bracketing principles for years, Kentucky could still end up in any of those three seed lines.
“That race for the end of the 2 and 3 line is probably as congested as I’ve seen it in the last few years,” Ommen told the Herald-Leader on Wednesday, a few hours before the SEC Tournament was set to tip off in Nashville and two days before the Cats play their first tourney game.
Ommen mentioned several teams that Kentucky is currently bunched in with and might need to outperform over the next few days to earn a better spot on the NCAA Tournament seed list.
“If I read off a list of names to you — Florida State, Villanova, Creighton, Kentucky, Michigan State, Seton Hall, Maryland, and then even maybe Oregon … and even throw a Louisville in there — that’s quite a group of teams competing for just a few spots,” he said.
His projections currently have Kansas, Gonzaga, Baylor and Dayton as the No. 1 seeds, with KU and the Zags locked into the top spots. He has San Diego State, which is done playing until the NCAA Tournament, as the top No. 2 seed. The Aztecs (29-2) are virtually assured at least a No. 2 seed, no matter what happens in the other conference tournaments.
Then it gets tricky.
Ommen has Florida State, Villanova and Creighton — in that order — as the other No. 2 seeds. His No. 3 seeds — in order — are Kentucky, Duke, Michigan State and Seton Hall, followed by Maryland, Oregon, Louisville and Wisconsin on the 4 line.
Usually by this point in the season, Ommen says, the teams on those 2 and 3 seed lines are more locked in, which means the conference tournament games — which ultimately factor as a very small percentage of a team’s overall resume — don’t much matter.
That might not be the case this season.
“Any one game isn’t going to have a huge outcome, unless you’re right along the cut line,” Ommen said. “But we do have — particularly in that spot where Kentucky is — a little bit of room to figure out exactly how maybe those eight or 10 teams end up getting ordered. And it might only be one or two spots on the seed list, but those one or two spots could be the difference between being a 2 seed or a 3 seed.”
Ommen’s overall path for the Cats — as of now — includes an opener against 14-seeded Bradley in Greensboro, N.C., followed by a date with the Iowa-UCLA winner. UK is currently placed in Ommen’s Indianapolis region, where Kansas, Creighton and Louisville are the 1, 2 and 4 seeds, respectively.
Kentucky’s tournament resume
The Wildcats have a 25-6 record with a 15-3 showing in the SEC — good enough for the outright league title — and some high-quality non-conference wins. But the perceived weakness of the SEC coupled with some head-scratching losses leaves UK in a seeding predicament.
“This won’t surprise any Kentucky fans: there’s a lot of good on their resume, and then there’s a couple of points that obviously aren’t so good,” Ommen said. “But when you look at a resume in its totality — like the committee will do — they weigh everything from start to finish. ... So the committee will look at Kentucky’s resume overall, and the fact that they are 9-3 against Quadrant 1 teams, the fact that they have performed well on the road — with an 8-2 record in true road games — the fact that they have non-conference wins over teams like Michigan State and Louisville, a road win at Texas Tech … there’s a lot to like that can benefit Kentucky from a seeding standpoint.”
To Ommen’s point, the Cats have a higher winning percentage against Quadrant 1 teams and a higher winning percentage in true road games than any of the other nine teams he mentioned as possibly battling UK for the final spots on the 2 seed line.
But Kentucky also has the lowest NET rating — the NCAA’s relatively new sorting tool for rankings — of any of those teams Ommen mentioned. The Cats go into this week’s games with the No. 21 NET ranking, while Duke, Michigan State, Louisville and Florida State are all in the top 10. UK is also the only team in that group with a Quad 4 loss — that Evansville stunner.
The rest of the SEC’s inability to win very many big games outside the conference has dragged down the league’s profile as a whole — Ommen projects just four SEC teams will make the tournament — and it’s clearly hurt Kentucky’s NET ranking. The three biggest wins on the Cats’ resume are all out-of-conference games: Michigan State, Louisville and Texas Tech. Many of the other teams UK is battling for seeding have similarly impressive non-conference victories to go along with “better” wins against league foes.
What seed will Kentucky be?
A No. 3 seed appears to be the most likely outcome for the Wildcats, but there’s definitely room for movement in either direction.
Ommen has Kentucky just one spot away from being the final No. 2 seed. He said it would be tough to move Florida State off that line, adding that the Seminoles could even threaten for a 1 seed with an ACC Tournament title and some other things breaking their way. His final two No. 2 seeds — Villanova and Creighton — are both in the Big East. Obviously, only one can win the tournament title, and if one or both of those teams were to fall early — and Kentucky wins two games to make the SEC finals on Selection Sunday — the Cats could very well make a jump.
“Right now, I would have both of their resumes slightly ahead of Kentucky’s overall — just because of the strength of the Big East and their number of wins and that neither one of them have those lower-end losses that Kentucky has taken,” Ommen said. “But I think Kentucky has a legitimate shot to get to the bottom of the 2 line if things go well this week.”
A more unlikely scenario would have Kentucky dropping down to the 4 line, something that — according to Ommen’s projections — would have to include an early exit for the Cats in the SEC Tournament coupled with some good runs by teams currently ranked behind them.
“I would say it’s possible, yes,” he said. “I can’t sit here today and tell you there’s no way that Kentucky could end up at the top of the 4 line. But I think they’re most likely going to stay on the 3 line, unless they win and have a chance to work their way up a line or two on the seed list.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2020 at 7:33 AM.
