As we move farther along in the season in most years the one seeds separate themselves. While I think Arizona and Wichita St. at this moment are safely in as one seeds if any one of them of the choices were to lose that could quickly change. Syracuse and Florida on my big board remain as #1 seed currently but my bracket math is starting to make that fourth #1 seed image murky. The team that is competing for that last spot is Kansas. Now if you look at the bare essentials generally everyone believes that Kansas will be left out of that picture because they have six losses while Arizona, Syracuse, and Florida each have two and Wichita St. has none. That is the only factor that would keep Kansas from being a #1 seed and I will explain why.
Kansas has arguably played the toughest schedule in at least a decade. Not only do they play in the Big 12, the best conference in the country this year, but they also had the #1 Non-Conference Strength of schedule. What does this all add up to? It means they played an astronomical amount of top 100 opponents so lets break each of the #1 seed candidates by the math.
Kansas v.s. RPI top 25 7-5 Arizona v.s. RPI top 25 4-0
v.s. RPI top 50 12-6 v.s. RPI top 50 9-1
v.s. RPI top 100 17-6 v.s. RPI top 100 14-2
Florida v.s. RPI top 25 2-1 Syracuse v.s. RPI top 25 3-1
v.s. RPI top 50 5-2 v.s. RPI top 50 7-1
v.s. RPI top 100 13-2 v.s. RPI top 100 15-1
Wichita St. v.s. RPI top 25 1-0
v.s. RPI top 50 2-0
v.s. RPI top 100 6-0
While the numbers obviously show that Wichita St. clearly has an extremely weak resume I just can't imagine a scenario where the Selection Committee would put an undefeated potential 34-0 Wichita St. team anywhere except a #1 seed. It is important to note though if Wichita St. were to lose it's last regular season game or in the Missouri Valley Tournament they would most certainly not be a #1. Quite literally the 0 in their loss column is the only thing holding them on the top line.
Now with the Wichita St. scenario laid out lets move onto Arizona. I believe they have by far the strongest profile of any of the teams and for that reason they remain my top overall seed. While they lack the amount of games Kansas has played against the top 25, 50, and 100 their overall quality far surpasses Kansas. They have won 90% of the games they played against the Top 50 which is mind blowing while Kansas has won 50%. Their win percentage along with the strength of the PAC 12 leads me to believe that Arizona will be a #1 seed regardless of what happens down the line.
Comparing the other 3 teams is where things get interesting. While Florida and Syracuse have sterling records against the top 100 Kansas far surpasses both in top 25 and top 50 wins. They more than triple Florida in top 25 wins and double up Syracuse in the same category. The question then comes back to where started in this article do the 6 losses matter? I would argue in most cases having 4 more losses than either team is important but 5 of the 6 losses by Kansas were to top 25 RPI teams. The other was to RPI 36 Kansas State. Let me recap that the worst team that Kansas lost to is RPI 36 on the road. If we dig a little bit deeper out of 31 games against division 1 opponents this season Kansas will have played 3 teams ranked outside of the RPI 150.
v.s. RPI sub 150
Kansas 3-0
Florida 9-0
Syracuse 8-1
That number may be the most astonishing of all. We often say every game is a grind for power conference teams but every schedule in the nation pales in comparison to Kansas. They quite literally decided to play every good team they possibly could and we penalize them with a #2 seed because they lost 6 games when they played top 25 teams 9 more times than Florida and 8 more times than Syracuse?
There is still a lot to play out but figuratively if Kansas is to win out and win the Big 12 tournament with the addition of the quality wins it would most certainly take to do so regardless of what Syracuse or Florida do Kansas would have to be a #1 seed. There could also be an argument made that if Syracuse or Florida were to lose, with fewer opportunities to improve their resumes that Kansas could achieve a #1 seed that way as well. Overall we still have more time to evaluate each team but everyday Kansas appears to be making it harder to leave them off of the 1 line.
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