NCAA insider: Tournament committee ‘didn’t condemn’ Pac-12

Did the Pac-12 get slighted once again by the NCAA tournament?

The power conference received five bids on Selection Sunday — its largest showing since 2008 — but no team gained higher than a sixth seed.

The Pac-12 tournament champion Oregon Ducks received a surprisingly low No. 12 seed, while both Arizona and UCLA are six seeds. The Wildcats had been projected as a No. 4 or No. 5.

Sporting News College Basketball Insider Mike DeCourcy told Arizona Sports 620’s Doug & Wolf Show Monday he doesn’t think the Pac-12 has been hit as hard as other power conferences have been in previous years.

“First of all, the Oregon thing I don’t get,” DeCourcy said. “They seeded Arizona as a six, and they seeded UCLA as a six so they didn’t condemn it to the level that for instance in 2009 when they didn’t have an SEC team out of the eight-nine game. I think the SEC had two or three that year by virtue of an unexpected bid winner and nobody was seeded higher than an eight-nine game. So you haven’t been punished like that.”

DeCourcy doesn’t think any true injustice was done, with exception to Oregon.

“The Oregon thing is an outlier,” DeCourcy said. “I don’t know what went on there and honestly in some ways it’s a favor. I’d always rather be in any other area of the bracket than an eight-nine game. An eight-nine game is a death sentence. Almost never do eight-nines get past that one (seed) in the second round.”

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