What is Kentucky’s outlook for a No. 1 seed? A top-ranked bracketologist weighs in.
Will the Kentucky Wildcats be seeded as one of the top four teams in the 2022 NCAA Tournament?
There’s still a ways to go before that question is answered — Selection Sunday is four weeks away, with plenty of basketball left to be played — but the Cats are clearly making a good case for themselves heading into the homestretch of the regular season.
In fact, Dave Ommen, who operates the Bracketville website dedicated to NCAA Tournament projections, moved Kentucky to the No. 1 line on his seed list earlier this week.
Heading into the weekend, Ommen — who is ranked by BracketMatrix.com as one of the nation’s most accurate “bracketologists” — had Auburn, Gonzaga, Kentucky and Kansas as his four projected No. 1 seeds, in that order.
Purdue, Arizona, Baylor and Wisconsin were the No. 2 seeds on his list, with Duke as the top No. 3 seed following a not-great-on-paper home loss to Virginia on Monday night.
“Right now, there’s a group of teams that realistically — with a month to go — are potentially in that conversation to end up as a No. 1 seed,” Ommen told the Herald-Leader on Thursday. “Kentucky has put themselves in a position to be one of those teams.”
Ommen said part of the reason he bumped Kentucky up to the No. 1 line on Wednesday is the “dominance” the Wildcats have been showing in recent weeks, particularly in their victory at Kansas, a major resume-booster at this stage in the season. The bracketologist also likes UK’s “favorable” metrics and remaining schedule, which includes four home games and several more opportunities to come away with impressive victories.
“If you do a little forecasting, you look at the schedule and I could see Kentucky being a favorite in at least five of their last seven, and maybe six of their last seven,” he said.
The Cats beat Florida in Lexington on Saturday and will have additional home games against Alabama, Louisiana State and Mississippi, with road games remaining at Arkansas, Florida and Tennessee.
After Saturday’s games, Kentucky was the No. 3 team in the NET rankings — the recent replacement to the RPI and more of a sorting tool for the NCAA than an actual ranking of significance, from a seeding standpoint — and the Cats are No. 3 in the KenPom rankings with varying ratings throughout the top 10 in some of the other metrics used by the selection committee.
There’s no exact formula to NCAA Tournament seeding. It remains a much-scrutinized process with a very human element, and no committee necessarily values the exact same things from year to year. There are common threads, however, and — judging from recent history — Kentucky should have a good case for a prime seed.
Ommen, who started the Bracketville website in 2008 and quickly became the resident bracketologist for NBC Sports, boiled down the process, particularly at the top of the seed list.
“I think, ultimately, it’s really this: Who did you beat? Where did you beat them? Who did you choose to play? And how did you perform away from home? And then the fifth is just an overall evaluation,” he said.
That “overall evaluation” would include what is often called the “eye test” — i.e. how a team actually looks on the court — and Kentucky is thriving in that category, as well as most of the others in Ommen’s hierarchy.
Kentucky’s NCAA Tournament case
With the win over Florida, the Cats have a 21-4 record and 10-2 mark in the Southeastern Conference. They’re the No. 5 team in the AP rankings — meaningless for seeding purposes, but obviously indicative of their season so far — and UK has won six in a row and 14 of its last 16 games. The only two losses in that span — at No. 1 Auburn and at LSU — came when two of the Cats’ best players missed significant time with injuries.
UK’s only other losses this season were in the opener against Duke and in its first true road game at Notre Dame, which went into the weekend with the best record in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Meanwhile, the Cats have that huge victory at Kansas and four road wins in the SEC.
Obviously, it’s a pretty good body of work to this point in the season.
A few major variables in the seeding process will be what the NCAA has deemed Quad 1 games, as well as road and neutral-site records. Kentucky is 5-4 in Quad 1s — defined as home games against top-30 teams in the NET rankings, neutral games against top-50 teams, and road games against top-75 teams. UK is 5-3 in true road games and 1-1 in neutral-site games.
A weak aspect of UK’s resume falls into Ommen’s category of “who did you choose to play?” The Cats have eight Quad 4 games — defined as the worst possible competition — with four games against teams with a NET ranking below 250 and two games against teams with a ranking of worse than 300.
One of those games was against Georgia — which UK had no control over, as a conference opponent — but that mark is mostly a result of the incredibly easy, to put it mildly, home schedule that Kentucky set up for itself to start the season. Of the 12 teams at the top of Ommen’s seed rankings, only Gonzaga, which plays in the West Coast Conference, has more games against Quad 4 opponents this season.
So, that won’t be a great look for Kentucky on Selection Sunday, but it’ll be easy for the Cats to overcome if they keep winning.
Sorting out the No. 1 seeds
Ommen specifically mentioned seven teams when talking about the No. 1-seed battle to this point: Auburn, Gonzaga, Purdue, Kentucky, Kansas, Arizona and Baylor. Each of those teams has an interesting case and an intriguing path moving forward.
Gonzaga (21-2), which usually dominates the WCC, is No. 1 in the NET rankings and the KenPom ratings. While the Zags do have road games left at St. Mary’s and San Francisco, it seems unlikely they’ll lose more than one the rest of the way, and probably more likely that they’ll run the table. They’re 7-2 in Quad 1 games.
Auburn (23-2) lost at Arkansas this week, but they have a similarly stout tournament resume (7-2 in Quad 1 games) and a relatively easy schedule — by SEC standards — moving forward.
Kansas (20-4) suffered that lopsided home loss to Kentucky, but the Jayhawks are 8-3 in Quad 1 games with a 5-2 road record and a 3-1 mark in neutral games. They’re also leading the Big 12 standings.
Ommen pointed out that Purdue (21-4) — now with an 7-3 record in Quad 1 games — had been looking like the best team in the Big Ten recently, though the Boilermakers lost in an 82-58 rout at Michigan on Thursday night. That will count as a Quad 1 game, and Purdue will still have a few more chances to further boost its resume, but the blowout loss to the Wolverines is more good news in Kentucky’s quest for a top seed.
Purdue dropped from No. 4 all the way to No. 9 in the NET rankings following the Michigan loss. On Friday morning, Ommen moved them from the third No. 1 seed on his list to the top No. 2 seed, a drop of two spots and another example of how closely some of these teams are perceived to be in the race for a top seed.
Arizona (22-2) has only two losses and that could realistically hold going into Selection Sunday. The Wildcats — No. 2 in both the NET rankings and KenPom ratings — are 6-2 in Quad 1 games with a matchup at No. 21 Southern Cal their only remaining game against a ranked opponent in the regular season.
Ommen also said that if Baylor (21-4) gets hot — as well-regarded as the Big 12 is this season — the defending national champs could get into the No. 1 seed mix. The Bears are tops in the country with eight Quad 1 wins (an 9-3 mark) and have three more games against Top 25 teams in the regular season.
“We could also see a late charge by somebody,” said Ommen, who didn’t rule out the possibility of some other team entering the conversation with a blistering end to the regular season.
Duke, seemingly on the cusp of No. 1 seed territory just a week ago, might have blown its opportunity completely with that loss to Virginia, a Quad 3 defeat since it was on the Blue Devils’ home court. The ACC is weak this season, and Duke has zero Quad 1 games remaining in the regular season. So, the Blue Devils will probably need to win out and see some others ranked ahead of them rack up some losses for Mike Krzyzewski to get a top seed in his final season.
UK’s remaining schedule
As the NET rankings stood heading into the weekend, Kentucky will have Quad 1 opponents for five of its final six regular-season games, and — depending on how things shake out — the Cats could get another two or three Quad 1 games in the SEC Tournament.
That’s a major opportunity to pad that tournament resume.
Even better for John Calipari’s team: they look like favorites in most of those games.
The outlier on the remaining schedule is a Quad 3 game at home against Ole Miss on March 1. The Quad 1 games remaining will be at home against LSU and Alabama, and on the road at Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida.
Ommen said he would view Kentucky as the favorite for all three of its remaining home games, plus the regular-season finale in Gainesville. The games at Arkansas and Tennessee would be more in the toss-up category, but obviously winnable for the Wildcats.
“If you even split with Tennessee and Arkansas, that’s going to put Kentucky in a position to go into the SEC Tournament at 26-5,” Ommen said. “In that scenario, you make it to the championship game — and let’s say it’s them and Auburn — depending on what else happens, you could be looking at both of those teams being on the 1 line on Selection Sunday.”
Of course, Kentucky’s standing in the No. 1 seed conversation will also be dependent on what else happens around the country. If Gonzaga, Auburn, Purdue, Arizona and either Baylor or Kansas all run the table heading into their conference tournaments, for instance, things get tricky. That’s all possible, but highly unlikely.
It seems a safe bet that if Kentucky can win five of those last six regular-season games, the Cats will enter the SEC Tournament in the driver’s seat for a top seed. If UK can win out in the regular season, the league tournament might not matter at all.
Other scenarios could make it tougher.
“If they lose both at Tennessee and Arkansas — without knowing what everyone else has done — they might have a little catch-up to do to get back to the 1 line,” Ommen said.
There’s also that scenario that Kentucky could play Auburn in the SEC Tournament title game on Selection Sunday, a matchup that surely anyone who cares about college basketball would like to see. While it would be fun to bill such a game as a battle for a No. 1 seed, the reality is that the two teams would likely be largely settled at that point. Unless UK and Auburn are sitting at No. 4 and 5 on the NCAA’s list — and their resumes are incredibly similar — the outcome of the game probably wouldn’t move one or the other a full seed line. It could have an effect — if both are set on the same seed line — on which region each team ends up in, however.
That’s one more hypothetical in a February of basketball that will be filled with them.
Bottom line for Kentucky: keep winning, and a high seed will be there four weeks from now.
“There are so many different variables in this,” Ommen said. “It’s really hard to get a definitive. I think we’ll have more of a picture of who’s in that conversation at the end of the month. By then, we’ll have a pretty good idea.”
This story was originally published February 11, 2022 at 7:00 AM.
