When the N.C.A.A. Division I men’s basketball tournament committee members hunkered down in Indianapolis over the weekend, they pored over spreadsheets, stared at a bank of televisions, sharpened their pencils and massaged their temples to figure out how to best seed the 68-team tournament field.
They might have saved themselves all that time — and anguish — by picking names out of a hat.
This year’s tournament, which was announced on Sunday night, has an on-any-given-Sunday feel, where blue bloods don’t feel so rich, mid-majors don’t feel so middling and every team enters with questions — even at the very top.
At Alabama, those begin off the court.
Alabama, the top overall seed, is in an unprecedented situation: trying to win a national championship while a now ex-player is in jail on murder charges and two current players, including the team’s star, Brandon Miller, are witnesses in the case.
Alabama Coach Nate Oats has come under withering criticism, beginning last month when he characterized Miller’s involvement as being in the “wrong spot at the wrong time” and continuing with persistent questions about whether Miller, who police said transported a gun to the scene of the crime, and Jaden Bradley, who was also at the scene, should even be playing. Neither Miller nor Bradley have been charged with a crime.
On the court, Alabama looked part of a favorite in rolling to the Southeastern Conference tournament championship with an 82-63 victory over Texas A&M on Sunday.
“This one right here, this one’s very special, considering everything that’s gone on this year,” said Alabama senior guard Jahvon Quinerly.
The Crimson Tide won on Sunday behind a hugely supportive crowd in Nashville and will have more of the same on Thursday when they play less than an hour’s drive from their campus against the victor of a play-in game between Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and Southeast Missouri State. The next weekend, they wouldn’t be much farther away from home, at the South regional in Louisville, if they advance.
As much as the Crimson Tide are showered with affection by their own fans, the murder case involving one of their now former players, Darius Miles, is all but certain to make them the tournament heel for the vast majority of the tournament’s audience as long as they remain playing.
Oats was asked what his message would be to his team as it enters the tournament.
“Obviously, we never lose sight of the tragedy that’s kind of marked our season,” he said. “It’s always there. But today with the team, we’re going to celebrate this win without losing sight of that. Moving forward, we’re going to keep the team focused on the task at hand, just like we have without ever losing sight of the fact that it’s an unbelievably sad situation. Our guys have done a pretty good job of that.”
If the sight of Alabama cutting down the nets in Houston is discomfiting for N.C.A.A. officials, it was hard to make a case for anyone else to be the top overall seed.
Start with Kansas, the reigning champion seeded No. 1 in the West region, which has an impressive résumé but this weekend was without its coach, Bill Self, who sat out the Big 12 tournament after being hospitalized with an undisclosed medical issue. The Jayhawks were blown out Saturday by Texas in the conference title game but were still made a No. 1 seed.
So was the Midwest No. 1 seed Houston, which has a sparkling 31-3 record, but lost to Memphis in the American Athletic Conference title game on Sunday and has had a relatively easy schedule. The Cougars also lost to Alabama earlier this season.
And Purdue, seeded first in the East region, looked like the best team in the country for three-plus months with its 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey but had a run in February that included four losses in six games. The Boilermakers won the Big Ten tournament on Sunday, but not before nearly collapsing in the final minute against unranked Penn State.
A week ago, U.C.L.A. had a strong case for the top overall seed.
But the Bruins, who won the Pac-12 regular-season title by four games, lost to Arizona in the conference tournament title game without their two best defenders, forward Adem Bona and guard Jaylen Clark, the latter seemingly unlikely to return this season. The Bruins, who had a 12-game winning streak snapped on Saturday night, were becoming a popular pick as favorite before Clark suffered a lower body injury in the regular-season finale.
After U.C.L.A. rallied to beat Colorado in a Pac-12 quarterfinal on Thursday, Bruins senior forward Jaime Jaquez Jr. said when asked what they would look like without Clark: “We’re still trying to figure that out. This is our first game without him. He brings so much to our team. He brings intensity, energy. He’s our X factor when it comes to defensive end as well. On offense he can do so many things.”
He added: “But with that being said, we got a lot of guys that can step up."
U.C.L.A. has not provided any updates on the condition of Clark since its conference tournament began. U.C.L.A. Coach Mick Cronin, asked if there was no incentive to disclose more information about Clark’s status, said he was prohibited from saying more about Clark’s injury because of privacy rules.
Chris Reynolds, the tournament selection committee chairman, said last week that the committee evaluates teams that are missing a player or coach, and reaches out to conferences and schools to gather the most up-to-date information because “that would be something that we would need to consider as we seed teams.”
That might have been particularly easy until this summer when the Pac-12 removed U.C.L.A. Athletic Director Martin Jarmond from the selection committee after U.C.L.A. announced it planned to jump to the Big Ten in 2024. The Pac-12 replaced Jarmond with Arizona Athletic Director Dave Heeke as its representative.
Houston is trying to become the first hometown team to play in a Final Four since Butler lost the 2010 title game in Indianapolis to Duke.
The Blue Devils’ captain that night, Jon Scheyer, is now their coach, replacing the retired Mike Krzyzewski after last season’s national semifinal loss. Duke, along with another nationally branded program, Gonzaga, is entering the tournament without the usual Final Four-or-bust expectations. But they are playing the type of basketball that often makes them fearsome in March — the Zags blowing out St. Mary’s to win the West Coast Conference tournament and the Blue Devils rolling to the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament title.