No. 1 seed gets to pick venue at March Madness

The Selection Committee gave the first overall seed a huge boost for March Madness.

No 16-seed has ever beaten a one-seed in March Madness, but the NCAA Selection Committee just gave them an even tougher mountain to climb. In a statement released by the NCAA, the first overall seed will get to choose where to play their first and second-round games in advance of Selection Sunday. This is presumably to give the title of first overall seed more weight.

While they won’t know who their opening round opponents will be, the number one seed will get a choice of cities that will play host to the first two rounds. Those cities are Buffalo, Milwaukee, Orlando, Salt Lake City, Greensboro, Indianapolis, Tulsa and Sacramento. So it’s not like they’re getting home court advantage per se, but it’s still a big reward, especially since March Madness is designed so that nobody gets control over anything.

This is all part of a larger effort on the NCAA committee to place more emphasis on regular season titles. While the National Association of Basketball Coaches is working to create an updated composite ranking, a finalized version of that wouldn’t come out until 2017-18.

First overall seeds typically go far in March Madness, but this move is a big boost in ensuring they get to the Final Four. That might rub fans of other college basketball teams the wrong way, especially since upsets are the best part of the tournament, but the Final Four is more exciting when the best teams are in it as opposed to a game like UConn vs. Butler, in which Butler shot 18% in the entire game. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out next year.

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