The team that went undefeated in the regular season, racked up more victories than anyone but Duke and Arizona \u2014 and fewer losses than any team at all \u2014 is anything but your run-of-the-mill basketball behemoth.<\/p>\n
In fact, Miami (Ohio), despite that 31-1 record and maybe because of a little chip that\u2019s been placed on its shoulder, is one of those plucky underdogs that makes the NCAA Tournament<\/a> what it is. <\/p>\n Welcome to March Madness<\/a> with a twist. <\/p>\n While Duke (32-2) took the overall top seed on Selection Sunday<\/a>, with Arizona (32-2), Michigan (31-3) and defending champion Florida (26-7) also on the top line, the RedHawks barely scratched their way into the bracket. <\/p>\n They are an 11 seed and have to play a First Four game against SMU on Wednesday. But after all the debate and hand-wringing that came with their single loss<\/a> last week, which immediately turned them from sure thing into bubble team, they now enjoy the same privilege as the other 67 teams in the field. <\/p>\n They will have a chance to win and advance, with no selection committee, bracketologists or former coaches-turned-TV experts deciding their fate.<\/p>\n \u201cI was very confident,\u201d Miami forward Eian Elmer said. \u201cI think it\u2019s hard to leave a team that\u2019s 31-0 in a regular season out. It just wouldn\u2019t look right for the sport, diminishing something like that, something that\u2019s very rarely done.\u201d<\/p>\n After the First Four, the full slate of games<\/a> begins Thursday and Friday, with the national champion set to be crowned in Indianapolis on April 6.<\/p>\n The chair of the selection committee, Keith Gill, tried to explain how Miami of the lightly regarded Mid-American Conference ended up where it did. The RedHawks, he said, were not the last of the 37 at-large teams slotted into the field. <\/p>\n But, he said, they were ranked last of those 37 teams because once they got in, they were compared against other teams close to them, and things like their 339th-ranked strength of schedule and zero wins (in fact, zero games) against top-caliber, or Quadrant 1, opponents worked against them. <\/p>\n Other factors worked for them, including having the nation\u2019s second-ranked scoring offense, along with a \u201cstrength of record\u201d in the top 30 and \u201cwins above bubble\u201d in the top 40 (each of those statistics would take a small pamphlet to explain).<\/p>\n \u201cThey have some really strong resume metrics that show their accomplishments,\u201d Gill said. <\/p>\n For what it\u2019s worth, Miami is an 8 1\/2-point underdog against SMU and a 2000-1 longshot to win it all, according to BetMGM Sportsbook. <\/p>\n Unlikely, indeed, but still better odds than the much-cited 9.2 quintillion-1 odds a person has of filling out a perfect bracket.<\/p>\n Some conference tournaments mean more than others<\/p>\n The favorite to win the national championship, according to BetMGM, is Michigan, which was listed at 13-4 shortly after the bracket came out, just a tad ahead of Duke, which was 10-3. <\/p>\n The Wolverines took a mini-hit in the seedings, dropping a notch to overall No. 3 after an eight-point loss<\/a> to Purdue in the Big Ten title game. The Boilermakers are a 2 seed instead of a 3 with the win, heading to St. Louis to play tournament first-timer Queens.<\/p>\n The conference title did not do as much for St. John\u2019s (28-6), which stayed where it\u2019s been predicted most of the season \u2014 as a No. 5 \u2014 even after a 20-point win over UConn for the Big East title. <\/p>\n \u201cTheir results in the nonconference did not have kind of the same depth and quality of some of the folks that are ahead of them,\u201d Gill said of the Red Storm\u2019s less-than-stellar non-conference showing this season. <\/p>\n Last year, St. John\u2019s became the sixth team coach Rick Pitino had led to the tournament. This year, the Johnnies go again but they must travel to San Diego to face Northern Iowa in the first round.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Don\u2019t take it as a negative,\u2019\u201d Pitino said. \u201cI\u2019ve had teams go to a Final Four that first had to go to Portland and then Arizona from Louisville.\u201d<\/p>\n Bubble bursts for Auburn, San Diego State and others<\/p>\n Among those left out<\/a> were San Diego State, Indiana, Oklahoma and Auburn.<\/p>\n The Tigers had 16 losses but the nation\u2019s third-best strength of schedule. The snub drew predictable blowback from Bruce Pearl, their former coach and father of their current coach, who was working for CBS and said \u201cthey played the toughest schedule in the country and I don\u2019t know if they were rewarded for it.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with Oklahoma and Auburn left out, the Southeastern Conference led the way by placing 10 teams in the field of 68, four short of its record from last year.<\/p>\n The Big Ten followed with nine, the ACC and Big 12 with eight apiece — an unsurprising result in an era of massive conference expansion and NIL compensation drawing top players to the biggest spenders.<\/p>\n The Gators are the defending champion, trying to repeat their back-to-back titles from 2006-07. Last season, Florida was part of an all-No. 1 Final Four — the first time that had happened in 17 seasons.<\/p>\n Houston gets a No. 2 seed and a potential regional in its hometown <\/p>\n No. 2 Houston got placed in the South Regional, with its potential Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games scheduled for Houston. In the mix is a possible rematch of last year\u2019s national final against Florida, which would essentially be a road team with a better seed. <\/p>\n \u201cIf we have to run into that issue, there\u2019s worse problems in the world,\u201d Gators coach Todd Golden said earlier this week. But \u201cI would enjoy somebody else in Houston (rather) than Houston.\u201d<\/p>\n Giving teams home games in regionals is something the NCAA tries to avoid. Gill said it wasn\u2019t possible in this case, and pointed out that last year, Houston was a No. 1 seed that beat Purdue in Indianapolis, which is located an hour away from the Boilermakers campus.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I would say is, it\u2019s the NCAA Tournament,\u201d Gill said. \u201cYou\u2019re going to have to win games away from home against really tough opponents, and that\u2019s why this is the best postseason in sports.\u201d <\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP Sports Writers Mike Fitzpatrick and Joe Reedy contributed.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n AP March Madness bracket: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ncaa-mens-bracket<\/a> and coverage: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/march-madness<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The team that went undefeated in the regular season, racked up more victories than anyone but Duke and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4075,1855,2527,22889,22888,3108,82747,8294,111,2516,89880,1882,28,2530,89586,30,29,477,89884,89883,2537,37368,29573,67845,7642,2520,89882,16562,89881,64945,1854,28624,10154,89879,110,3116,1110],"class_list":["post-193104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-ap-top-news","tag-arizona","tag-arizona-wildcats","tag-arizona-wildcats-mens-basketball","tag-az-state-wire","tag-basketball","tag-bruce-pearl","tag-college-basketball","tag-college-sports","tag-duke-blue-devils","tag-duke-blue-devils-mens-basketball","tag-fl-state-wire","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-gators-mens-basketball","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-general-news","tag-keith-gill","tag-march-madness-ncaa-tournament","tag-mens-college-basketball","tag-mi-state-wire","tag-miami-redhawks","tag-miami-redhawks-mens-basketball","tag-michigan","tag-michigan-wolverines","tag-michigan-wolverines-mens-basketball","tag-nc-state-wire","tag-ncaa-mens-bracket","tag-ncaa-mens-division-i-basketball-championship","tag-north-carolina","tag-oh-state-wire","tag-ohio","tag-rick-pitino","tag-sports","tag-todd-golden","tag-u-s-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}