Kentucky enters NCAA as top 'Cat overall

INDIANAPOLIS -- Kentucky was selected the overall No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament field Sunday, joined on top of the brackets by Duke, Stanford and Saint Joseph's.

Kentucky will be the top seed in the St. Louis regional, while Duke is in the Atlanta regional, Stanford in the Phoenix regional and Saint Joseph's in the East Rutherford regional.

The St. Louis and East Rutherford regional winners will meet in the national semifinals.

The tournament begins Tuesday night with the play-in game in Dayton, Ohio, between Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference champion Florida A&M (14-16) and Patriot League champion Lehigh (20-10). That winner will play Kentucky (26-4), the Southeastern Conference champion, on Friday in Columbus, Ohio.

The other top seeds in Kentucky's regional feature Gonzaga at No. 2, followed by Georgia Tech and Kansas.

The last time Kentucky was a No. 1 seed was in 1996, when it won the national championship.

Saint Joseph's, which won its first 27 games before losing by 20 points to Xavier in the Atlantic 10 tournament, opens play in Buffalo, N.Y., on Thursday against Liberty. The other top seeds in the regional are Oklahoma State, Pittsburgh and Wake Forest.

The effect of the Hawks' blowout loss was one of the big questions heading into Selection Sunday.

"That was very heavily debated," tournament selection committee chairman Bob Bowlsby said. "We came into the process with seven, eight, nine teams that could have been a No. 1.

"We had a lot of scenarios unfolding. A lot with Saint Joseph's on the top line and some with others on the top line."

Oklahoma State was one team that could have replaced Saint Joseph's as a No. 1 seed. But the Cowboys' Big 12 championship game Sunday, a victory over 11th-ranked Texas, began too late to be a factor in the selection.

Duke (27-5), which lost to Maryland in overtime in the Atlantic Coast Conference championship game, is a No. 1 seed for the sixth time in seven years. The Blue Devils had been the overall No. 1 until losing to Maryland, Bowlsby said.

Duke opens against Alabama State on Thursday in Raleigh, N.C. The No. 2 seed in the Atlanta regional is Mississippi State followed by Texas and Cincinnati.

Pac-10 champion Stanford (29-1) meets Texas-San Antonio on Thursday in Seattle. The other top seeds in the regional are Connecticut, North Carolina State and Maryland.

Maryland, the 2002 NCAA champion, was a team considered on the bubble two weeks ago, but the Terrapins' run through the Nos. 3, 2 and 1 seeds in the ACC moved them to a No. 4 seed.

"The ACC is one of the top conferences in the country, and when you're playing as well as Maryland is, it does impress you," Bowlsby said.

Syracuse, the defending national champion, is the No. 5 seed in the Phoenix regional.

Kansas, the No. 4 seed in the St. Louis regional, will have the same advantage Syracuse did last year, playing games close to home until the Final Four. The Jayhawks open against Illinois-Chicago in Kansas City, about an hour from their Lawrence campus, while St. Louis is about 4 1/2 hours away.

Syracuse was a No. 3 seed last year and won its first two games in Boston and then won the regional in Albany, N.Y., about two hours from campus.

Pittsburgh seemed to get a bad break from the "pod" system. The Panthers open against Central Florida but then could face sixth-seeded Wisconsin, the Big Ten champion, in the second round in Milwaukee, about an hour from the Badgers' Madison campus.

Arizona continues the longest current appearance streak. The Wildcats have been in every NCAA tournament since 1985. Indiana had the second-longest streak -- since 1986 -- but that's over.

The Hoosiers were joined by college basketball powers Georgetown, UCLA and St. John's on the sideline this year.

The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Conference USA and Southeastern Conference each got six teams into the tournament. The Atlantic 10 and Big 12 each had four chosen.

The Big Ten, Mountain West and Pac-10 received three bids each, and the only other conferences with multiple bids were the Western Athletic and Missouri Valley, with two each.

Only one team -- Eastern Washington, the Big Sky tournament champion -- is making its first appearance in the tournament.

Air Force, the Mountain West regular-season champion, had the longest drought among teams that had played in the tournament, making the field for the first time since 1962. Nevada is in the field for the first time since 1985 and Lehigh is in for the first time since 1988.

Texas-El Paso, the 13th seed in the Phoenix regional, was the last at-large team selected. It is making its first tournament appearance since 1992.

Other teams on the bubble that didn't make the field included Colorado, Missouri, Florida State and Utah State.

Florida A&M is the only sub-.500 team in the field. The Rattlers were 12-18 in their only other NCAA appearance in 1999.

The regionals are March 25-28 and the Final Four is in San Antonio on April 3 and 5.