KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas’ men’s basketball team is listed as a No. 2 seed in the South Regional of the 2023 NCAA Tournament, according to ESPN.com’s current projections revealed on Tuesday.
Analyst/bracketologist Joe Lunardi, who issues several brackets during the course of the college basketball preseason and regular season into the postseason, has defending national champion KU playing No. 15 Colgate in a first-round tourney game in Des Moines, Iowa. The winner would meet either No. 7 seed Michigan or No. 10 Florida in the second round, in Lunardi’s projection.
Kentucky is the projected No. 1 seed in the 2023 South Regional with KU the No. 2 seed, Duke the No. 3 seed and Indiana the No. 4 seed.
Other projected No. 2 seeds: Baylor in the Midwest Regional, which has Sweet 16 and Elite Eight games scheduled to be played at Kansas City’s T-Mobile Center, plus Texas in the East Regional (New York) and UCLA in the West (Las Vegas).
Lunardi’s projected No. 1s at this time: Houston in the Midwest Regional, North Carolina in the East, Kentucky in the South and Gonzaga in the West. The 2023 Final Four will be at NRG Stadium in Houston.
Lunardi does not have Missouri, Kansas State or Wichita State making the tourney field. However, he lists Missouri as one of the “first four out.”
Big 12 teams making the field in Lunardi’s projection: KU, Baylor, Texas, TCU, Texas Tech, Oklahoma and Oklahoma State.
Lunardi wrote Tuesday: “Will the Kansas Jayhawks become the first repeat champions in men’s college basketball since Florida in 2006 and 2007? That’s among the questions to consider in the offseason prelude to the 2022-23 season, with the countdown on following a frenzy of transfer movement and the usual spate of NBA draft decisions. … Lost in the shuffle of the latest realignment bombshells is perhaps the most savvy basketball pickup by any major conference. That would be the Houston Cougars, set to join the Big 12 in time for the 2023-24 college hoops season. Think about it. The Big 12 has already won the past two NCAA championships (Baylor in 2021, Kansas in 2022) and it would have had both the Bears and Jayhawks as No. 1 seeds in the canceled 2020 tournament. Meanwhile, Houston has gone Sweet 16-Final Four-Elite Eight in the same time span and is a projected 1-seed for 2023. It’s not inconceivable that the Big 12 could boast the past THREE national champions once Houston joins a year from now. If so, you heard it here first.”
