Baylor, Louisville, Notre Dame and UConn top seeds in reveal

NEW YORK (AP) — Baylor, Louisville, Notre Dame and UConn are the No. 1 seeds in the second NCAA Top 16 reveal.

The Lady Bears remained the No. 1 overall team and would be the top seed in the Greensboro Region, according to the potential seedings revealed Monday night. The Cardinals would be the No. 1 seed in Chicago. Notre Dame would head out to Portland and UConn would be in Albany.

Rhonda Lundin Bennett, chair of the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee, said there were five or six teams in consideration for the top line of the poll.

“I think just generally it shows how much basketball has been played and there are a lot of teams that have had an opportunity to move up in their seeding and move into the first line,” she said.

“You have your four No. 1 seeds, and at least a couple other teams that could easily be there. Everyone looks very similar and is playing very, very well.”

Most of the top teams are getting ready for conference tournament play to begin this weekend. Both UConn and Baylor played Monday night.

“There’s a lot of basketball left to be played,” Bennett said. “We’ll have a much clearer picture when we have to make the selections.”

If the seeds were to hold, the defending champion Fighting Irish would have to play Oregon in the regional final. The Ducks were the top No. 2 seed, but geography trumped going with pure seeding which would have had them in Albany with UConn.

“We do have all the different principles and procedures, seed-line order, and then the geography comes into play,” she said.

Other No. 2 seeds in the reveal are Mississippi State, Iowa and Stanford.

The three seeds are Oregon State, Maryland, N.C. State and South Carolina.

Miami, Iowa State, Texas A&M and Syracuse round out the potential top 16 teams, which would host the opening two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. All those teams would play at home with South Carolina playing the first two rounds in Charlotte because the Gamecocks’ home court is being used for the men’s opening rounds.

The women’s tournament seeds will be revealed on March 18. The Final Four will be back in Tampa on April 5 and April 7.

This is the third straight year that the women will have their national semifinals and finals on a Friday-Sunday format. Before last season, the Final Four hadn’t used that format since 2002.