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The Kentucky Wildcats will be a No. 5 seed in the 2018 NCAA Tournament. They were placed in the South Region and will play No. 12 seed Davidson on Thursday. No. 1 overall seed Virginia is this region’s top seed. Arizona is the 4 seed.
Here’s a look at the entire region:
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Coming into Selection Sunday, UK was being projected to be anywhere between a 4-6 seed, so this doesn’t come as a real surprise.
There were a lot of intriguing factors going into this and how it may affect UK’s seed, including how the Cats did without Jarred Vanderbilt earlier this season, how well they played when he finally got going in the rotation, then his latest injury and how well UK played without him in St. Louis, winning the SEC Tournament.
All told, UK can’t really complain about its seeding as a team with double-digit losses heading into the Big Dance. They certainly had game where they looked like a team that could be a 3 or 4 seed, but they also had far too many games where they looked like an 8 or 9 seed.
I don’t think there’s any question UK was one of the harder teams to seed in the tournament, mostly because of how different they’ve looked throughout the season, not to mention the unknown status of Jarred Vanderbilt and how severe his injury really is.
We’ll update this post shortly...
NCAA Tournament Schedule:
- First Four: Tuesday, March 13 and Wednesday, March 14
- First Round: Thursday, March 15 and Friday, March 16
- Second Round: Saturday, March 17 and Sunday, March 18
- Sweet 16: Thursday, March 22 and Friday, March 23
- Elite Eight: Saturday, March 24 and Sunday, March 25
- Final Four: Saturday, March 31
- National Championship: Monday, April 2