Kentucky won big at Kansas. So why did the NCAA selection committee rank KU ahead of UK?
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The NCAA Tournament selection committee revealed its top 16 seeds, as of now, during a special bracket show on CBS before the Kentucky-Alabama game Saturday afternoon.
Some UK basketball fans were surely left scratching their heads when Kansas was revealed as a No. 1 seed and Kentucky as a No. 2.
It was just three weeks ago that the Wildcats scored a decisive 80-62 victory over the Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse, one of the best wins in all of college basketball this season. So how could KU be given a better seed than UK?
In the eyes of the selection committee — as well as bracketologists — the Jayhawks simply have a better tournament résumé than the Wildcats at this point in the season.
It’s important to remember that while Kentucky’s victory at Kansas was a huge one for its own tournament résumé, it’s not an automatic ticket to pass up KU on the seed list.
“Fans, in particular, get very caught up in head-to-head results,” Bracketville founder Dave Ommen told the Herald-Leader. “The committee looks at the team in its entirety. So, the fact that they beat Kansas is a great résumé addition. But, in and of itself, it doesn’t necessarily mean that Kentucky had a better résumé than Kansas.”
In other words, the Cats get credit for that win in Lawrence, but they don’t get extra credit just because they’re near Kansas in the bracketing process. The value of the victory is added to Kentucky’s case, and that’s that. It doesn’t necessarily add more value just because Kansas is competing with UK for a No. 1 seed.
Ommen, who is ranked among the nation’s most accurate bracketologists, told the Herald-Leader that the game in Lawrence could be used as a tiebreaker of sorts if the résumés of Kentucky and Kansas are incredibly even on Selection Sunday, but such head-to-head games are at the bottom of the spectrum when trying to seed teams. Committee members are looking at the overall résumés, first and foremost.
In some very important areas, Kansas appears to have the upper hand.
There’s no exact formula that the selection committee follows when setting the bracket, but Ommen mentioned several key factors that are clearly important in the process. Among them: “Who did you beat? Where did you beat them? And who did you choose to play?” he said, adding that performance away from home and the “eye test” were also major evaluation tools.
Not long ago, the NCAA introduced the “quadrant” system to judge the value of victories, separating games into four different categories, with “Quad 1” victories being the most impressive and “Quad 4” victories the least.
Going into the weekend, Kansas had an 8-3 mark in Quad 1 games. Kentucky was 5-5.
In most cases, those Quad 4 games — for teams in major conferences — reflect the type of non-conference schedule a school chooses to play. More Quad 4 games typically means more home games against lower-quality opponents. Kentucky has eight Quad 4 games, while Kansas has only two — a reflection of the easy home schedule the Cats put together for this season.
Ommen had Kansas as a No. 1 seed and Kentucky as a No. 2 seed coming into the weekend, with the Jayhawks occupying the No. 4 spot on his seed list and UK at No. 5. The latest bracketology updates from ESPN and CBS Sports also had KU as a No. 1 seed and UK as a No. 2.
The selection committee has Kansas at No. 4 overall, with Baylor as the top 2 seed at No. 5 overall, and Kentucky next at No. 6 overall. Selection committee chairman Tom Burnett acknowledged UK’s road win at Kansas and said Saturday that could be taken into greater consideration if the two teams are right next to each other on Selection Sunday in three weeks. Burnett said Kansas, Baylor and UK were all close, in the eyes of the committee members.
Kentucky still has plenty of time to bolster its résumé. Four of the Cats’ five remaining regular-season games will be Quad 1 matchups, starting with Alabama on Saturday. (The home game against Mississippi on March 1 is the outlier). UK is also likely to get at least a couple of Quad 1 games in the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
Kansas also has four remaining Quad 1 games on its regular-season schedule, however, starting with a road game at West Virginia on Saturday.
This story was originally published February 19, 2022 at 12:41 PM.
