Selection Sunday 2017: What to expect when the NCAA bracket is revealed

The greatest Sunday of the sports calendar year and perhaps America’s most celebrated nonofficial holiday has finally arrived. Selection Sunday means hours of speculation, then an hour of observance, followed by a few more hours of reaction and predictions. The entire day is a symphony.

Check out our full NCAA bracket, updating live throughout March Madness. You can find a printable bracket here.

When the bracket is released in full, the predictions will start flowing in and they won’t stop until the first major wave of games tip off on Thursday afternoon. But what about some predictions regarding the thing that will lead to the massive onslaught of even more predictions? Would you enjoy that?

Here are five:

1. There will be little agreement on which region is the strongest

There’s a common saying throughout this season that this is a “wide-open year” in college basketball. That’s probably not entirely true, as there seem to be about 12-15 teams that have distanced themselves from the rest of the country as the season has turned the stretch and headed for home. The difference between those 12-15 contenders, however, is as thin as it’s been in any season of recent memory.

With all that being the case, it’s extremely doubtful that there will be any “region of death” talk once the brackets have been revealed Sunday evening.

Typically, there’s an established overall No. 1 seed and then at least a couple of teams on the seeding lines below that the public agrees are better than their second, third, or fourth-seeded brethren. When two or three of those teams wind up with the same path to the Final Four, the public cries foul and one grouping dominates the other three in everybody’s “toughest region” polls from Sunday night up until the first games on Thursday afternoon.

This year, there is no clear-cut overall No. 1 seed, and there are no “obviously superior” teams on the seeding lines below. Kansas or Villanova? Arizona or Duke? Everyone has an opinion on these questions, but there’s not going to be an overwhelming consensus on any of them. Because of that, expect the committee to get some pats on the back for “keeping the regions fair,” even though there was no possible way for them to make them lopsided.

2. Gonzaga’s region will be labeled by the public as the easiest

Perhaps the strangest phenomenon that exists in all of college basketball right now is the one that surrounds Gonzaga. In two decades, the Bulldogs have made the previously unfathomable trek from “lovable Cinderella” to “lovable mid-major that’s somehow competing with the big boys” to “perpetually overrated team that the media won’t stop shoving down our throats.”

The notion that Gonzaga “always underachieves” is, on its face, false. This year will be the Zags’ 19th consecutive trip to the NCAA tournament. In their previous 18 appearances, they matched or exceeded their expectations based on their seed 12 times.

The memory that sticks out to most Gonzaga nonbelievers is 2013. That year, Mark Few’s team was a controversial No. 1 seed that was pushed by Southern in the first round and then upset by Wichita State two days later. Never mind that the Shockers went on to the Final Four and gave eventual national champion Louisville its biggest scare. The damage was done, and the Bulldogs were labeled as pretenders.

I’m not here to argue one way or the other about Gonzaga’s merits as a No. 1 team or its credentials as a Final Four contender/pretender. I’m just here to tell you what’s going to happen: Mark Few’s team is going to pop up Sunday night as a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed, and America is going to label whichever region it lands in as the weakest of the tournament’s four.

3. The ACC and Pac/12 powers will be placed on a collision course

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee has a set rule that forces it to place the top four teams from a conference in different regions if all of those teams are also top four seeds. This means that the big three from the Pac-12, Arizona, UCLA, and Oregon, will all be placed in different regions. The same will happen for the top four teams from the ACC, likely North Carolina, Duke, Florida State and Louisville (potentially Notre Dame).

Most, if not all, of those seven teams are going to be seeded third or better, which means that if everything goes according to plan, we should be in store for a handful of showdowns between these powerhouse teams from opposite ends of the country.

4. Duke, Gonzaga and Wichita State will be the most hotly debated non-bubble teams

There is already significant chatter that Duke’s ACC tournament championship has positioned the Blue Devils to become the first eight-loss team ever to earn a No. 1 seed. It’s a realistic outcome, given the facts that the team has more Top 50 RPI wins (13) than any other team in the country and that most of its losses were affected by extenuating circumstances like injuries or Coach K’s absence that the committee will take into consideration.

If the Blue Devils are a No. 1 seed, some people will freak out about it and others will vehemently defend it. If they’re anything else, some people will freak out about it, and others will say the committee gave them a cakewalk to the Final Four.

The controversy surrounding Gonzaga is obvious and has already been touched upon, so let’s move on to Wichita State. The Shockers are No. 8 in the country, according to Ken Pomeroy’s rankings. They have a sparkling 30-4 record, they demolished the rest of the Missouri Valley Conference, and they have nine NCAA tournament wins in the last four years.

On the flip side, they lost to each of the three best teams on their schedule — Louisville, Michigan State, and Oklahoma State — and if conference brethren Illinois State doesn’t make the field, they’re not going to have a single victory over a team good enough to earn an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.

Most people would agree that Wichita State’s overall quality should have them seeded in the Nos. 3-6 range. The problem is, their resume also makes it defendable to have them seeded in the Nos. 7-10 range. How the committee chooses to handle that is anyone’s guess.

If it’s the former way, then a lot of major conference powers with a lot of quality wins are going to be upset. If it’s the latter, then the little guys are going to be very mad, as are the poor single-digit seeds that have to square off against the Shockers in round one or two. Ask Arizona or Kansas how that feels.

5. The Sunday championship games won’t matter

Because they never do. The committee has admitted as much in the past.

I’m not talking about the championship games in one-bid leagues, of course, but the Big Ten, the SEC, the AAC and the Atlantic 10? Your seeds are already set (yes, even you, Rhode Island). You’re playing for a trophy and an addition to your media guides.

A year ago, Kentucky and Texas A&M squared off on Selection Sunday in an SEC championship game featuring two teams with very similar resumes. The Wildcats won and hours later saw themselves pop up as a No. 4 seed, a full line below the third-seeded Aggies. John Calipari was shocked and outraged and even spent part of his summer ranting about the ridiculousness of the situation.

The reality is that Calipari, and all of us, should have seen it coming. Why? Because pretty much the same thing happened a year earlier to the Wildcats, and the committee admitted it.

During the 2015 media mock selection process that the NCAA has now discontinued, Louisville radio show host Jason Anderson tweeted out the following:

So we’re talking about a Kentucky team that many believed was underseeded, as it was at a No. 8 seed, which would have received absolutely no benefit from beating the tournament’s No. 1 overall seed on a neutral court. Then what real purpose is the game even serving besides money and preselection show television ratings?

So if Michigan beats Wisconsin by 95 Sunday afternoon, don’t spend any time wondering how much higher the Wolverines are going to jump. The reality is that, in the eyes of the committee, its body of work has already been completed.