Virginia tops bracket with powerful defense

The other No. 1 seeds were Villanova (30-4), the Big East champion; Kansas (27-7), the Big 12 regular-season champion for a record 14th consecutive year; and Xavier (28-5), also of the Big East. The four No. 2 seeds were North Carolina (25-10), the defending national champion; Duke (26-7); Purdue (28-6); and Cincinnati (30-4), the American Athletic Conference champion.

The biggest subplot, though, is that the tournament is being played in the shadow of a widespread federal investigation into corruption in college basketball recruiting. The investigation, which led to criminal charges against nearly a dozen defendants last year, is continuing, and an NCAA commission is examining possible reforms.

The Pacific-12 champion Arizona (27-7), Auburn (25-7) and Miami (22-9) are among the programs in this year’s field that were directly implicated in the scandal; one news report also made allegations tying Arizona coach Sean Miller to a discussion of illicit payments for his star freshman, DeAndre Ayton. Miller strongly denied the report.

There were three teams implicated in the scandal that were on the bubble — Louisville, Oklahoma State and Southern California — and all three were left out.

On Sunday night, Creighton athletic director Bruce Rasmussen, chairman of the men’s basketball committee, confirmed that this was coincidental. The committee did not take the allegations into account; such matters, he said, were “outside our purview.” He said the same thing Wednesday, but when the three teams got the news Sunday, there were still plenty of skeptics.

The most challenging region appeared to be the Midwest. The No. 1 seed is Kansas, but the Jayhawks may have to face No. 8 Seton Hall (21-11), which began the season with great promise. The quadrant’s bottom half features Duke, whose freshman big man Marvin Bagley III looks as if he could be an NBA star already, and third-seeded Michigan State (29-4), among the most balanced teams. According to the advanced analytics site KenPom.com, Kansas is the third-best team in its own quadrant. Duke ranks third in that site’s figures, with Division I’s third-best offense and seventh-best defense.

Kansas will stay close to home, though, playing the opening round in Wichita, Kansas, and, if it gets far enough, the second weekend in Omaha, Nebraska.

The Midwest’s No. 16 seed is Penn (24-8), which won the Ivy League’s automatic bid by defeating Harvard, 68-65, on Sunday. The last time an Ivy team received a No. 16 seed was 1989, when Princeton lost to Georgetown by a point — as close as any bottom seed has come to beating a top seed in 128 such matchups.

Virginia, which began the season unranked in the Associated Press poll, might be considered the prohibitive favorite, as much as the notoriously anarchic tournament can be said to have one. The Cavaliers have been superb for most of coach Tony Bennett’s nine seasons, with four regular-season titles in the traditionally tough ACC. Yet they have not made the Final Four since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, with their last national semifinal coming in 1984, when they were knocked off by a Houston team led by star center Hakeem Olajuwon.

But the South Region will present Virginia with a tough road to the Final Four in San Antonio. On the second weekend, in Atlanta, the Cavaliers may face a major-conference champion in either Arizona or fifth-seeded Kentucky (24-10) — the Southeastern Conference champion, in its record 58th NCAA Tournament. Waiting in the regional final could be No. 3-seeded Tennessee (25-8) or Cincinnati — KenPom.com’s fourth-best team overall.

In the East, Villanova’s toughest competition figures to be fifth-seeded West Virginia (24-10), whose pressing style can fluster even the most poised opponent; fourth-seeded Wichita State (25-7); and, should both arrive in the regional round in Boston, No. 2-seeded Purdue, which has had its best season in years.

Beyond Xavier, the South’s toughest outs include last year’s runner-up, Gonzaga (30-4), which received a No. 4 seed; red-hot Michigan (28-7), the No. 3 seed and the Big Ten champion; and North Carolina, which will open the tournament in nearby Charlotte.

For the second straight year, the ACC placed nine teams in the tournament. The Southeastern Conference, which has made a concerted effort to transfer its success in football to the hardcourt, got eight of its 14 teams into the field.

And it is a big year for the Big East, which received two No. 1 seeds, for Villanova and Xavier, and has six other top contenders among its 10 teams. Villanova, under coach Jay Wright, is displaying consistent excellence. Two years ago, it won the tournament as a No. 2 seed, then lost two starters; returned as the No. 1 overall seed, then lost a national player-of-the-year finalist, Josh Hart; and is now back as the second overall seed.

The fabled last four in were Arizona State, St. Bonaventure, Syracuse (which was not thought even to be on the bubble) and UCLA. The first team out was Notre Dame, which played much of the season without its injured senior star Bonzie Colson. It is only the second tournament Notre Dame will miss since 2009. Rasmussen noted Sunday night, in explaining the committee’s decision to leave out the Irish, that Notre Dame had suffered a couple of bad losses while Colson was healthy.

It continued to be difficult for mid-major conferences to place their teams in the field. The total of five that received at-large bids this year — Houston, Nevada, Rhode Island, St. Bonaventure and Wichita State — was only one better than last year. St. Mary’s was left out despite going 28-5 and beating Gonzaga because, Rasmussen said, it did not have enough quality wins, even as he acknowledged that it is structurally difficult for teams outside basketball’s six power conferences to schedule top nonleague competition.

For the first time, the committee released preliminary rankings in February. Oklahoma (18-13) dropped from a No. 4 seed to a No. 10, the product of losing eight of its final 10 games.

Challenged about Oklahoma’s seed by TBS’ Charles Barkley, Rasmussen said, “The games in November count the same as the games in February.”

The college game continues to keep pace with general basketball trends, with teams attempting nearly 22 3-pointers per game and making 7.7. Both figures are the highest since the line was moved back a foot in 2008. The game also has sped up, with about four more possessions per team, since the shot clock was cut to 30 seconds from 35 for the 2015-16 season.

Division I’s average adjusted tempo is a little more than 68 possessions per game, per KenPom.com. Yet there is a decided outlier: With a paltry average of 59.2 possessions per game, Virginia is the single slowest team in college basketball. It also may be the best.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.