Arizona Grabs Four Seed In South, Opens Against Buffalo Thursday

TUCSON, AZ – Watch out, Boise. The Wildcats are headed that way. On Thursday, Arizona will face off against Buffalo in the first round of the NCAA tournament.

Arizona received the fourth seed in the South. Buffalo is seeded 13th.

If the Wildcats win, they will next play Saturday against the winner of Kentucky and Davidson.

Meanwhile, Arizona State is in. Sort of.

While the Sun Devils started the season 12-0 and climbed to number three in the nation, they went on to lose 11 of their last 19 games, the selection committee looked favorably on wins against USC, and UCLA in conference and out of conference wins against Xavier and Kansas.

ASU has to play on Wednesday in Dayton against Syracuse in a play-in game to get the big show.

The tournament will feature some familiar faces.

Coach Mike Krzyzewski, perhaps the most recognizable college basketball coach ever, has his Duke Blue Devils poised to go deep into yet another tournament, though they looked shaky in their ACC Tournament loss to rival North Carolina, the defending national champions. Tar Heels coach Roy Williams will have to rely on his team’s deep experience to stabilize what has been up-and-down play.

Here’s the 2018 NCAA men’s basketball tournament printable bracket.

Here’s the 2018 NCAA men’s basketball tournament schedule.

You might want to figure out just what channel your cable company planted truTV. CBS Sports and Turner Sports will provide live coverage of all 67 games from the 2018 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship across four national television networks – TBS, CBS, TNT and … truTV. All games will be streamed on NCAA March Madness Live.

This year, the Villanova Wildcats, just two years removed from their last national championship season, are favored to win it all, according to the latest odds from BetOnline.ag. Duke and the University of Virginia Cavaliers round out the top three favorites.

• Villanova, 9/2
• Duke, 5/1
• Virginia, 6/1
• Michigan State, 8/1
• Michigan, 9/1
• Kansas, 10/1

But the annual tournament, which dates to 1939, is regarded as one of the most unpredictable sporting events in all of sports, with big upsets and Cinderella stories seeming to be written every year.

In 2006, George Mason University became the second 11-seed in history to reach the Final Four. Just last season, the Xavier Musketeers, seeded 11th out of a possible 16 seeds, reached the Elite Eight. The South Carolina Gamecocks, seeded 7th, made it all the way to the Final Four in the same tournament.

UCLA has the most titles with 11. The University of Kentucky has the second-most with eight championships and the University of North Carolina has six.

File photo via Christian Petersen/Getty Images Sport/Getty Images.