March Madness is upon us, and the 2024 NCAA Tournament bracket has been revealed for men's basketball, and fans questioned the placement of UConn, Iowa State, Illinois and Auburn in the East region.
UConn is the No. 1 overall seed, and the criticism comes from the Huskies getting placed in the same region as the three other best conference champions. UConn went 31-3 overall, winning the Big East Tournament on Saturday, while Iowa State won the Big 12 Tournament, Illinois won the Big Ten Tournament and Auburn won the SEC Tournament.
Notably, all four of these teams are in the top ten in Kenpom rating, a popular analytics site for college basketball. UConn is the No. 1 team on Kenpom, while Auburn is No. 4, Iowa State is No. 5, and Illinois is No. 10. Auburn is the only team in that group that is in the top ten for offensive and defensive adjusted efficiency, yet the Tigers are the four seed in the East region.
Luckily for the Huskies, they will play the first two rounds in Brooklyn at the Barclays Center, then if they advance, the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 games will take place in TD Garden in Boston. The UConn fanbase will not have to travel far, and it will likely feel like home games for the Huskies.
Fan reactions to the stacked East Region
Needless to say, fans had a ton of reactions to the East region and the amount of strong teams in it. Let's get to some of the best ones as we approach March Madness.
The 4 best conference champions this year were UConn, Iowa State, Illinois, and Auburn. The Committee accidentally put them all in the same region lol.
— RedditCFB (@RedditCFB) March 17, 2024
Cool. Made sure to keep all ACC teams safely out of this one.
— Passiønate Fan (@tKCyclone) March 17, 2024
UConn is going to have to play two of the top four KenPom teams that aren’t UConn to get to a Final Four road game against Arizona.
Great job committee, no notes. Huskies will do it anyway.
— No Escalators (@NoEscalators) March 17, 2024
They didn’t want a repeat champion…
— Mk330 (@miking330) March 17, 2024
It seems that fans believe that the East region is the strongest, despite UConn being the No. 1 overall seed. It will be interesting to see how things shake out, as there seem to be at least four teams with a legitimate chance to win a national title, when looking at the advanced metrics.
Despite the anger, fans will undoubtedly tune in to see these matchups. It is March Madness after all.
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