Kentucky Has the Toughest Region in the Bracket

For the first time the selection committee has released their 1-68 ranking of all teams picked for the NCAA Tournament.  This allows us to go through each region and determine how they stack up to each other by totaling up the ranks of the teams.  For First Four games I used the number of the better ranked team.

By just adding up all the teams in the bracket it would seem that Kentucky has the easiest bracket and North Carolina the most difficult(lower total equals better teams in region):


Kentucky:  531
Syracuse:  529
North Carolina:  518
Michigan St.:  529

If you start breaking up the region into groups of 4 (2-4, 5-8, 9-12, 13-16) a different trend emerges:

                     Kentucky          Syracuse           North Carolina        Michigan St.
2-4 Seeds:       30                      32                           30                           34
5-8                    95                      99                           96                          102
9-12                 167                    162                         157                         167
13-16               239                    236                         235                         226

As you can see Kentucky and North Carolina have the toughest 2-4 group of teams that they might face, but when you factor in Kentucky as the overall 1 and UNC the overall 3 then the South has the toughest 1-4 Region.  Kentucky also has the toughest 5-8 Region.  The numbers get balanced out by giving the Cats the easiest bottom half of a bracket.  When you think about it though a 1 seed might only play 1 game (it's opening game) against a 9-16 seeded team.

Also noteworthy is how easy of a region Michigan St. got dealt.  They have the easiest 2-4, 5-8, and 9-12. Their region gets balanced out by the most difficult 13-16 which for a 1 seed shouldn't matter as much.