2022 NCAA Tournament: Gonzaga, Duke, Texas Tech, Arkansas and UConn headline West Region
By Tuck Clarry
Now that the teams have been seeded and the pods selected it’s time to break down one of the most talented and deepest regions in the whole tournament.
The conference is headlined by Gonzaga and Duke, two teams that have had perennial success but with different trajectories. The Bulldogs’ Mark Few is still searching for his program’s first national championship after going 31-1 a season prior. The living legend Mike Krzyzewski is coaching in one last tournament before retiring and handing the reigns to former player and assistant coach Jon Scheyer.
The Zags and Blue Devils played each other all the way back in November in one of the most electric games of the college basketball season. It is a bit of a reunion for Gonzaga as the overall seed of the tournament, paired with two teams they lost to this season, Duke and Alabama, as well as a Texas Tech team they outlasted in December.
The region also hosts some of the most volatile teams in the country, with 9 seed Memphis and 6 seed Alabama. For as impressive as wins over Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston, and Tennessee are, their losses against Iona, Memphis, Davidson, Missouri, and Georgia are equally confounding for a team with the toughest schedule played this season. Penny Hardway’s Tigers have also had an up and down season resulting in press conference outbursts and players and staff leaving the team. How these teams show up now in single-elimination is anyone’s guess.
The committee also crammed a wild amount of talent into this region in terms of middle seeds that many thought could put the chalk on upset alert. Arkansas, Connecticut, and Texas Tech are three teams many pundits picked to surprise and play into the second weekend wherever they landed. Two of them would likely play each other in the Round of 32 in the Razorbacks and Huskies.