Written by Garin Turner
The regular season is done, conference championships have been played and tomorrow starts the First Four matchups as the 2026 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament starts this week.
The Number One Seeds
Duke (East Region)
Arizona (West Region)
Michigan (Midwest Region)
Florida (South Region)
Duke is the overall number one seed and with good reason. They are 32-2. They won the ACC both in the regular season and the conference tournament. Their two losses: then #19 Texas Tech 82-81, and then #14 in state rival North Carolina 71-68. They have the potential number one draft pick in the upcoming draft in Cameron Boozer leading them. Boozer is averaging 22.5 points a game and 10.2 rebounds a game. Finally, Duke is 12-2 against ranked opponents.
Arizona also sports a 32-2 record. That includes a 11-2 record against ranked teams. They started the year defeating the defending champions Florida 93-87. Their two losses were back-to-back (Kansas and Texas Tech) and that likely cost them the number one overall seed.
Michigan may have been the third number one anyways, but a loss to Purdue in the Big Ten Championship game sealed them at three. Despite that loss, the Wolverines are 31-3 and are led by Big Ten Player of the year, Yaxel Lendeborg. Michigan started the season 14-0 and was ranked 1st until Wisconsin beat them 91-88. The Wolverines wouldn’t lose again until Feb 21 against Duke 68-63. The Wolverines are 9-2 against ranked opponents.
The reigning defending champions, Florida got off to a less than ideal start, going 5-4. To be fair, three of those losses were to Arizona, Duke, and UConn. The Gators won 12 in a row before falling to Vanderbilt in the SEC semifinal 91-74. Despite the slow start and a blowout loss, the Gators earned the last number one seed going 6-3 against ranked opponents, two of them fellow number ones.
Cinderella anyone?
Upsets are becoming a thing of the past with NIL. The teams above along with the power conferences can pluck the best players on mid-major teams, offer them probably double of what they’re getting thus adding hired guns.
Miami-OH
I think Miami-OH should’ve gotten in and they did, kind of. They play SMU in a first four game in the Midwest Region to see who gets the 11 seed and plays 6 seed Tennessee. Miami-OH didn’t play the best schedule in the world and to avoid this in the future much like football, teams need to schedule a tougher non-conference schedule. Miami-OH said they’d tried but nobody wanted to play them. We’ll find out how good they really are soon.
Conference selections
SEC 10
Big Ten 9
ACC 8
Big 12 8
Big East 3
WCC 3
Atlantic 10 2
MAC 2
(image Credit: Purdue Athletics)
