Going West Might Be for the Best!

The Story: The UConn men were seeded No. 4 in the West Region and will take on No. 13 seed Iona, coached by old friend Rick Pitino, in the first round of the NCAA Tournament at 4:30 p.m. on Friday in Albany, New York.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: We love the NCAA Tournament committee. There are rumors of Pitino leaving Iona to go to St. John’s, and at Iona, Pitino has built a MAAC power that is back in the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three seasons under his watch.

• UConn is joined in the tournament with a beautiful No. 5 vs. No. 12 game in No. 5 St. Mary’s out of the West Coast Conference and No. 12 VCU, the Atlantic 10 regular-season and tournament champion. The winners of these games are slated for a Sunday afternoon tilt for a chance to play in the Sweet 16.

• And who is a potential opponent there? The Huskies are in the crosshairs of defending national champion Kansas, which is the No. 1 seed and considered the No. 3-ranked team in the NCAA Tournament. Alabama, which the Huskies beat handily in November, is the No. 1 overall seed.

• Pitino isn’t the only familiar face on the Iona bench. Taliek Brown, who was the point guard when the Huskies won the national championship in 2004 and is a former member of the coaching staff, is one of Pitino’s assistants.

• The Huskies are in Albany and the survivor of that pod will head to Las Vegas for the regionals. After Kansas, the West is interesting with No. 2 seed UCLA and No. 3 seed Gonzaga on each side of the bracket.

• The Huskies have been a No. 4 seed twice. They went down to the wire against No. 1 seed Texas in the Sweet 16 in 2003, the sophomore year for Emeka Okafor and Ben Gordon. The other time wasn’t fun. The Huskies lost A.J. Price to a knee injury in 2007 and were bounced in the first round by No. 13 seed San Diego.

• Iona, which has won 14 straight games and hasn’t lost since Jan. 27, is a live underdog. UConn is -9.5 against the Gaels.

• No. 4 seeds are considered contenders for the national title, but a No. 4 seed has only won the NCAA Tournament once: Arizona, led by Miles Simon, in 1997. In fact, 65 percent of champions have been No. 1 seeds and 90 percent of them have been a No. 3 seed or better.

• The outliers are:

• No. 4 Arizona in 1997
• No. 6 Kansas in 1988
• No. 7 UConn in 2014
• No. 8 Villanova in 1985

BROADWAY DUD: We aren’t going to dwell too much on the Huskies’ 70-68 loss to Marquette in the Big East semifinals on Friday. The Huskies had plenty of chances to win and losing by two points isn’t cause for alarm as they are still playing some of their best basketball of the season.

• What we continue to learn, however, is that the Huskies’ weakness is their lack of an elite one-on-one player. That makes it difficult for them to get baskets late and it requires excellent execution — something that could be fatal in the wrong matchup in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies had four wide-open 3s late, one each from Jordan Hawkins and Nahiem Alleyne and two from Joey Calcaterra. All missed.

• UConn lost in the semifinals of the Big East tournament for the third straight season. In the previous two years, the Huskies have had a hangover and played poorly in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. They lost to No. 10 seed Maryland two years ago and No. 12 seed New Mexico State last year.

• What do the Huskies have to do differently? Relax and let the game come to them. Trying too hard and doing things you don’t do during the season is how you get bounced early.

IS A NO. 4 SEED FAIR? UConn was slotted at No. 13 on the overall seed list as the top No. 4 seed and was behind No. 12 Xavier, which beat UConn twice and reached the Big East final.

• Do we think UConn is better than Xavier? Yes. But results matter and we think UConn’s seeding is fair. There was some annoyance that the Huskies aren’t No. 4 in the East Region, which could have meant playing the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight at MSG.

• Marquette is the No. 2 seed in the East, and the No. 5 seed in the East is Duke. We like a potential second-round matchup against St. Mary’s a little better. Purdue and Duke at MSG in a possible Sweet 16 matchup sounds fun.

POPULAR PICK: UConn is already garnering some credibility as a possible dark horse candidate. Now, we’ve seen this before.

• CBS’ Wally Szczerbiak picked UConn to reach the Final Four last year and we know how that turned out. This year’s bandwagon hoppers? ESPN’s Jay Bilas, the Twitter god and purveyor of rap lyrics every morning, has picked UConn to win the entire tournament. As far as his teammate, Rece Davis, he has the Huskies reaching the national title game and losing to Alabama in a rematch.

WHAT DO THE NUMBERS SAY? Why are the Huskies one of the favorites despite being a No. 4 seed? If you look at advanced metrics and odds, the Huskies have the fourth-best chance to cut down the nets.

• UConn has an 8.2 percent chance of winning the title behind favorites Houston (22 percent), Alabama (15 percent) and Gonzaga (8.6 percent). Kansas, the defending champion, is being given just a 2 percent chance to win the title. Something has got to give here as the metrics have been on UConn’s side all year and the humans have put the Huskies a step below.

• Outside of UConn’s 2014 run as a No. 7 seed, the last 22 national champions have ranked in the top 20 in adjusted offense and adjusted defense, per KenPom’s ratings.

BOTTOM LINE: We like UConn’s draw. Iona is a No. 13 seed and a good team out of the MAAC, but it isn’t at the level New Mexico State was as a No. 12 seed a year ago.

• Iona is 0-14 in the NCAA Tournament. It’s stingy defensively, but will that translate against elite size and athleticism? We don’t think it should, but that’s why you play the game.

• The potential second-round matchups are also favorable. The Huskies could take on St. Mary’s, which has one of the nation’s top defenses, or VCU, another defensive stalwart. It’s not going to face a team from one of the Power 6 conferences. There are also no NBA prospects on either team, which to us is typically a measure of talent. St. Mary’s was No. 2 to Gonzaga in the WCC but lost by 26 in the tournament final last week.

• We were disappointed and frustrated that the Huskies did not get out of the first round last year. They should get to the Sweet 16 this year, and from there, they will take their best shot at some of the best teams in the country.

— John Silver

A Favorable Path as a No. 2 Seed

The Story: The UConn women missed out on a No. 1 seed and instead were slotted as a No. 2 seed in what’s being called the Seattle 3 Regional, with No. 15 seed Vermont up first at Gampel Pavilion later this week with date and time to be determined.

BACK TO TWO: The Huskies are a No. 2 seed for the second consecutive year, and that was no roadblock for them last year as they advanced to the national championship game but lost to South Carolina in their 12th appearance in the final.

• There was some talk about whether the Huskies’ evisceration of their Big East opponents in the conference tournament, and the return of Azzi Fudd from a right knee injury at just the right time, would have put them in contention to seize a No. 1 seed behind South Carolina and Indiana. Instead, Virginia Tech earned the No. 1 seed in UConn’s region, and Stanford, which didn’t win the Pac-12 regular season or tournament titles, was given the last No. 1 seed.

• One of the things that the selection committee had to evaluate was how much of an impact Fudd’s return will have on the Huskies. She missed 21 games this season — and as a whole, the Huskies didn’t have every player who isn’t out with a season-ending injury available for just five games — but it seems the committee didn’t think it was that much of a game-changer. Wrong move.

WHO’S UP FIRST? America East champion Vermont, which last made the tournament in 2010, will be the victim in the Huskies’ opener. The Catamounts (25-6) notably won their conference tournament by beating No. 2 seed Albany at home in a barnburner — 38-36 on Friday.

• Waiting in the second round would be No. 7 seed Baylor or No. 10 seed Alabama, and neither should strike fear into the Huskies. The Bears (19-12) aren’t the dominant team that was coached until 2021 by Kim Mulkey, and Alabama (20-10) enters on a four-game losing streak after being bounced in the first round of the SEC tournament by Kentucky.

BEYOND THEN … : The NCAA Tournament has decided to have just two cities host regionals this year. Two will be held in Seattle and two will be held in Greenville, South Carolina, which is not surprisingly where the Gamecocks are headed.

• Also in the Huskies’ region are No. 3 seed Ohio State, which has had an up-and-down season and would be an interesting matchup given Dorka Juhasz transferred from the Buckeyes to the Huskies prior to last season, and No. 4 seed Tennessee, which UConn beat by 17 points on the road without Fudd in January.

• The No. 1 seed, Virginia Tech, is the ACC champion and is led by 6-foot-6 center Elizabeth Kitley, the conference player of the year for the second consecutive season. But we’ll worry about all that a week from now.

OUR TAKE: While we certainly would have loved the Huskies to claim a No. 1 seed — and think they had a legitimate case for one — we’re not going to be too torn up that it happened given that they seem to have a clear path to their 15th consecutive Final Four appearance.

• The other bonus? South Carolina is on the other side of the bracket, which means the Huskies wouldn’t play in them in a rematch — they lost the first game without Fudd by three points, remember — until the national title game.

— Zac Boyer

Morning Reads

• The men's hockey team's season ended Saturday as it lost 2-1 to UMass Lowell in the quarterfinals of the Hockey East tournament. (The UConn Blog)

• Kate Shaffer scored with 1:10 left in overtime to lead the women's lacrosse team to an 11-10 home win over No. 15 Yale on Saturday. (UConnHuskies.com)

Top photo: Dan Hurley coaches the Huskies during a game against Marquette at the XL Center. (Ian Bethune for The UConn Daily)