On Saturday, the NCAA Tournament selection committee gave an early first look at the top of its March Madness bracket for this season.
The selection committee has Michigan, Duke, Arizona, and Iowa State penciled in as 1-seeds heading into the closing weeks of the regular season. Notably, no SEC team was included in the top 8 overall seeds in the committee’s early bracket. Should that hold through Selection Sunday, it would mark the first time since the 2017-18 season when an SEC team was not on the top 2 seed lines for an NCAA Tournament.
Here are the top 16 teams, in order, revealed by the committee on Saturday:
- 1 SEEDS: Michigan, Duke, Arizona, Iowa State
- 2 SEEDS: UConn, Houston, Illinois, Purdue
- 3 SEEDS: Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Gonzaga
- 4 SEEDS: Texas Tech, Michigan State, Vanderbilt, Virginia
In total, the SEC only has 2 teams currently in the top 16 for the tournament field. When asked which teams just missed out on a top-4 seed, NCAA committee chair Keith Gill said Alabama and Arkansas were the most-discussed teams that didn’t make the cut.
Seven SEC teams made the Sweet 16 round last season. Multiple SEC teams have made it past the tournament’s opening weekend in each of the last 3 tournaments. At Kalshi, 3 SEC teams have a better-than-60% chance to qualify for the Sweet 16.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
