When the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee announces the projected top 16 seeds for March Madness on Saturday, there is a good chance top-ranked UConn will not be the No. 1 overall seed.
Head coach Dan Hurley doesn’t care.
His reigning national champions, 23-2 overall and 13-1 in the Big East, extended the nation’s longest winning streak to 13 games on Wednesday night with a 36-point win over DePaul. The Huskies are catching their stride as they approach the most challenging stretch of their schedule, beginning with No. 4 Marquette at 3 p.m. Saturday in Hartford.
UConn had a 19-7 record at the time of last year’s Bracket Preview show and didn’t make the cut. The Huskies finished the regular season winning their last five games and earned a No. 4 seed in the bracket following a semifnial exit in the Big East Tournament.
“Last year when they did it we didn’t even make the show,” Hurley said Tuesday on a Zoom call.
Currently No. 4 in the NCAA’s NET rankings with an 8-2 record in Quad 1 games, UConn is projected to still have a No. 1 next to its name on Selection Sunday March 17. Both ESPN and CBS have the Huskies currently slotted to be No. 1 in the East region, which would mean they’d begin their tournament run in Brooklyn and then Boston for the potential Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds. The Final Four is in Phoenix.
UConn has received a No. 1 seed five times in its history, the last one coming in 2009. Only one of UConn’s five national championships came as a 1-seed (1999).
Why not No. 1 overall?
It’ll likely be Purdue, 22-2 overall and No. 2 in the NET. The Boilermakers, upset as a 1-seed in the first round of last year’s tournament by 16-seed Fairleigh Dickinson, have the best strength of schedule in the nation, according to CBS Sports. UConn’s strength of schedule is ranked 40th, though it’ll likely improve as the Huskies finish the year with two games against Marquette and a road matchup at Creighton.
Headed by dominant 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey, the reigning National Player of the Year, Purdue is 7-0 against teams in the top 25 of the NET. UConn is 3-1 in such games, with its only loss coming shorthanded at Kansas, as three more await in Big East play, two of them on the road.
“The Big East in general, the lack of Power Five football or what have you, but the Big East doesn’t get enough respect, enough attention for the great games,” Hurley said. “We should have way more teams in this NCAA Tournament, because the league is as good as any league in the country.”
Both ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and CBS’ Jerry Palm have four Big East teams in their projected brackets with Butler the only non-top 25 team receiving a bid. Lunardi had Seton Hall, which handed UConn its last loss, in his “first four out” and Providence, St. John’s and Villanova in the “next four out” in his most recent Bracketology which was updated Thursday morning. Palm didn’t include any of those teams in his most recent update.
“I don’t know the ins and outs of everyone’s resumé, but I’ll say this: those games were tougher games for us than anything we played in the nonconference with the exception of the road game at Kansas,” Hurley said. “And we played some really good nonconference games. Marquette is a national championship caliber team this year, people think we are, and Seton Hall has beaten both us and them. So if the Tournament’s about who can you beat…”
In addition to top 25 games against Marquette, a projected 2-seed, and Creighton, a projected 5-seed, UConn still has to play bubble teams Seton Hall and Villanova at home before it wraps up the regular season in Providence.
“I think in the back of your mind, we know we have a great schedule of great challenges that are going to get us ready for tournament play coming up at the end of the year here,” Hurley told reporters Wednesday night after the 101-65 win over DePaul. “I don’t know that anyone was thinking ahead necessarily to the weekend, I think we knew that the best way that we could prepare for any future games was to have great preparation for this one. Play well, be confident going into the weekend and next week.”
