College basketball’s regular season is almost over. Where will Kentucky be sent in March?
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Game day: LSU 75, No. 17 Kentucky 74
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Wednesday night’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and LSU at Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
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Just five games remain in Kentucky’s regular season following Wednesday’s late-night tipoff at LSU, and then it’s tournament time.
Where will these Wildcats be headed for March Madness?
There were a slew of major bracketology updates coming out of the holiday weekend, and they showed a UK team back on the rise amid a college basketball season that’s been rife with upsets and shifts in the postseason projections.
Kentucky’s wins last week over Ole Miss and, more importantly, at Auburn led to some bracketology bumps for the Cats, who enjoyed their first 2-0 week in a month and also jumped from No. 22 to No. 17 in the latest Associated Press Top 25 poll.
While these Wildcats might’ve moved up in the eyes of NCAA Tournament prognosticators coming off those wins, where they’ll end up on Selection Sunday remains a crapshoot.
Kentucky is now generally regarded as a 5 or 6 seed in the 2024 tournament, and — due to the somewhat-complicated bracketing principles used by the NCAA — where teams in that range are sent for March Madness is often dependent on what else is going on above and around them in the bracket. While geography is always taken into account in the bracketing process, the further down the seed list you are, the more uncertainty over your destination exists.
Here’s a rundown of some of the major projections for UK to start the week:
▪ ESPN’s Bracketology has the Wildcats as a 5 seed, starting the tournament in Spokane and placed in the Detroit regional.
▪ CBS’ latest bracket projections have Kentucky as a 6 seed, starting off in Brooklyn and slotted into the Los Angeles regional.
▪ The Bracketville website puts the Wildcats in Spokane as a 5 seed, also sending them to the Los Angeles regional.
▪ USA Today’s group of bracketologists project Kentucky as a 5 seed, placing them in Spokane for the first two rounds but in the Dallas regional.
▪ Jake Liker’s bracketology site — judged by The Bracket Matrix to be the most accurate for the 2023 tournament — also has UK as a 5 seed in Spokane, but those projections send the Cats to the Boston regional.
So, there’s a consensus on Spokane — the farthest first-week site from Lexington — but no agreement whatsoever on where the Cats would play next, if they make it to the Sweet 16. That’s kind of how it goes that far down in the bracket.
Kentucky’s possible NCAA sites
The most certainty on geographic placement happens at the top of the seed list, where the very best teams in college basketball are slotted into the closest-available opening sites. For instance, barring a late-season meltdown, No. 1-ranked UConn will begin its NCAA title defense in Brooklyn, the closest first-round site, and then move on to Boston, the nearest regional. (The Huskies did lose by 19 at 15th-ranked Creighton on Tuesday night, snapping their 14-game winning streak, but they’re still on the top seed line, for the time being.)
The clear consensus — at this stage in the season — is that Purdue, Houston and Arizona will get the other No. 1 seeds. In that scenario, Purdue would go to Indianapolis and be in the Detroit regional, Houston would start in Memphis and go to the Dallas regional, and Arizona would begin in Salt Lake City and end up atop the Los Angeles regional.
Obviously, Kentucky can still play its way up the final seed list, with three Quad 1 opportunities — Alabama, at Mississippi State and at Tennessee — remaining on the regular-season schedule, plus some high-quality opponents awaiting in the SEC Tournament.
Ideally, the Cats would probably want to be in Indianapolis to start things off, but they’re more likely to get there via the luck of the draw — as a 5 seed or worse — than by playing their way up the rankings.
Only two teams slotted in seed ranges 1-4 go to each of the eight opening sites, and — looking at the Bracketville seed list as an example — there are a whopping six teams ahead of Kentucky (at No. 18 overall) that would have Indianapolis as their preferential starting site. Those teams include Purdue (No. 2 on the list) and Marquette (No. 7), and it’s unlikely the Cats have enough time left in this season to pass up those two, as well as the four others ahead of them.
The other seven opening-round sites, in order of proximity to Lexington, are: Pittsburgh (370 miles), Charlotte (400 miles), Memphis (422 miles), Brooklyn (709 miles), Omaha (767 miles), Salt Lake City (1,658 miles) and Spokane (2,155 miles).
If Kentucky isn’t in the 1-4 seed range, where it goes to begin the tournament will depend somewhat on which teams are in those spots. (The Cats won’t be in the same opening site opposite currently higher-seeded SEC rivals Tennessee, Alabama or Auburn, for example.)
If UK does make it into that 1-4 seed range, it’ll probably be at the back of that pack, leaving the Cats in one of the final available slots. Right now, Spokane and Salt Lake City appear likely to get one of those back-end top-16 teams. Bracketville has Creighton — its No. 16 team and final 4 seed — going to Spokane, for example. But if the Wildcats can creep a little higher into that seed range, the odds would likely increase that they would be able to stay closer to home.
What to watch
Kentucky obviously needs to win as much as possible to bolster its NCAA Tournament profile, and the three biggest pickup opportunities in the regular season will be Saturday in Rupp Arena against Alabama, on the road at Mississippi State on Tuesday, and then the trip to Knoxville for the finale at Tennessee on March 9.
All three of those games would qualify as Quad 1 matchups, the measure of the most difficult games on a team’s schedule, according to the NCAA’s current setup.
Kentucky is 3-6 in Quad 1 games and No. 21 in the NET ratings, another important sorting tool for the NCAA Tournament selection committee. The SEC Tournament should also provide UK with another Quad 1 opportunity or two (or maybe even three). As of now, six teams would qualify as a Quad 1 opponent for UK on a neutral court in Nashville next month: Alabama, Tennessee, Auburn, Florida, Mississippi State and Texas A&M.
So, there’s still plenty of basketball left to be played, and trying to figure out where Kentucky will begin its NCAA Tournament run, at this point, is a bit of a fool’s errand.
Selection Sunday is set for March 18.
This story was originally published February 21, 2024 at 4:00 AM with the headline "College basketball’s regular season is almost over. Where will Kentucky be sent in March?."
