Georgetown will face Ohio in first round
Georgetown and Maryland didn’t wait long to hear their names called Selection Sunday. Both teams were among the first revealed for the 2010 NCAA Tournament, drawn together into the Midwest Region.
But with their quarter of the bracket headlined by the tournament’s overall top seed, Kansas, talk of a showdown in the regional final will have to wait.
After four games in four days at the Big East Tournament had boosted their profile, the tired Hoyas were all smiles as they were welcomed into Leo O’Donovan Hall by multiple ovations from students.
“It’s because we’re playing well right now, and everybody knows that,” Hoyas junior guard Austin Freeman said. “We know that, and so everybody just knows the potential that we have right now.”
Georgetown, the region’s third seed, will open in Providence, R.I., the same place it did in 1989, when it advanced to the East Region final, against surprise Mid-American Conference champion Ohio. The two teams have never met.
“The good thing about going to Providence is we have a routine already,” said Hoyas coach John Thompson III, who pointed out that the Bobcats also played four conference tournament games last week, including three contests in three nights.
Should seedings play out, the Hoyas could find themselves facing Tennessee in the second round before a rematch of their 2007 Final Foul clash with Ohio State in the regional semifinals.
Maryland earned the immediate seed below Georgetown and was rewarded for a late-season surge to capture a share of the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season title. But the Terrapins must travel to Spokane, Wash., for their third all-time meeting with Conference USA champion Houston.
“We had to come from pretty far back,” Terps coach Gary Williams said. “We weren’t getting much play for a long time this year. Once we got everybody together, we gradually became a pretty good basketball team.”
Michigan State likely would await Maryland in the second round, with the Jayhawks looming thereafter.
The ACC received six bids, two behind the Big East, which topped all conferences with eight, but ACC champion Duke was at the heart of the tournament’s biggest seeding controversy. The Blue Devils received the third No. 1 seed, while West Virginia, the Big East champion, was handed a No. 2 seed.
“We basically were in a situation where all five of those teams had terrific resumes,” UCLA athletic director Dan Guerrero told CBS broadcasters Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg. “We look at the entire body of work from November all the way through the conference tournament, and we put a lot of value in the way that Duke finished.”
