Monday, March 12, 2007
OKLAHOMA CITY — The brackets have been announced, the pairings are in, and the Jayhawks are playing against …
Well, we don’t know yet.
Kansas (30-4) was deemed the fourth-best No. 1 seed, meaning it will face the winner of the play-in game, which will be between Niagara (22-11) and Florida A&M (21-13) Tuesday night.
“I’m not sure that’s all bad. We had that when I was at Illinois,” coach Bill Self said. “I think we need to step back and take a breath, get our batteries recharged.”
The Jayhawks will face the winner on Friday in Chicago.
“The good thing about it is that playing on Sunday, we get an extra day,” Self said. “Monday will be an off day, Tuesday we’ll look at Villanova and Kentucky a little bit, then after Tuesday night we can focus on the winner of the game.”
Looking ahead and imagining various scenarios are activities synonymous with March Madness, and there’s plenty to analyze in the Jayhawks bracket.
If Kansas wins Friday, it faces the winner of Villanova (22-10) and Kentucky (21-11) on Sunday. Kentucky is a big-name team that hasn’t fared as well as it would have liked this season.
pullquote
We’re more familiar with Kentucky because we played them last year.
-sophomore guard Mario Chalmers
“We’re more familiar with Kentucky because we played them last year,” sophomore guard Mario Chalmers said.
The second weekend would take place in San Jose, Calif. Illinois enters as a 12 seed, but Self’s old school would face the Jayhawks if they could pull a pair of upsets.
“I tell you what,” he said, “I hope we play Illinois, because that means we both won two games. I don’t pull against those guys at all.”
The odds favor a Kansas game against Southern Illinois (27-6). The Salukis were the dominant team in the Missouri Valley Conference this season.
On the bottom half of the bracket are Pittsburgh (27-7) and UCLA (26-5). The Bruins have a home-state advantage, as their opening round is in Sacramento and the second round would be in San Jose.
Most analysts listed them as the No. 1 seed in the West, but they lost on the opening day of the Pacific-10 tournament, which, combined with Kansas’ tournament victory, may have cost them the top seed.
Nationally, the tournament selection committee pulled an upset of its own by selecting Florida (29-5) as the best team in America instead of Ohio State, which was ranked No. 1 in both national polls.
In the Big 12 Conference, the surprise story was Kansas State (22-11) not making the tournament, a decision that Self called “ridiculous.”
“We’ve had that two years in a row now, with Colorado not being chosen last year,” he said. “Our conference had three of the best five teams in college basketball this season.”
Sunday’s game was further proof of the high-caliber of play at the top of the Big 12, and it almost overshadowed the selection show itself. By the time the Jayhawks had finished cutting down the nets, the show was beginning.
“I checked my watch, and thought, ‘We’ve got to end this right now,’” Self joked.
The Jayhawks will have plenty of time to analyze the bracket in the coming days, but they refused to do much speculation on Sunday, citing historical precedent.
“We’ve just got to be ready for that first game,” sophomore forward Julian Wright said.
Kansan senior sportswriter Michael Phillips can be contacted at mphillips@kansan.com.
— Edited by Lisa Tilson
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