By Nick Gray | UK basketball beat writer

ngray@kykernel.com

UK was selected as an 8-seed in the NCAA Tournament on Sunday in what is shaping up to be a region headlined by an untraditional program as well as undesired by head coach John Calipari and athletic director Mitch Barnhart.The Cats will face 9-seed Kansas State University in the Round of 64 on Friday in St. Louis.

The Midwest Region is filled with storylines, and it begins at the top. The Cats will have a possible Round of 32 matchup with 1-seed Wichita State (34-0, 18-0 Missouri Valley Conference), a team who did not play a team in the RPI Top 25 and had the 98th best strength of conference in the country.

To move onto that matchup, the preseason No. 1 team in the country will have to deal with a Kansas State team (20-12, 10-8 Big 12) who has lost three games in a row, all to NCAA Tournament teams.

The draw left a lot to be desired from Calipari point of view. He presented the Cats’ argument of strength of schedule and computer statistics from outside the NCAA Tournament’s selection committee room.

“Explain yourself,” Calipari said fans and pundits will say. “They have the fourth strength of schedule. Are you telling people they don’t have to play anybody?”

Barnhart, his boss, said UK tries to meet the selection committee’s standards that it can control, which includes nonconference scheduling.

“When the committee asks for you to play strength of schedule, that’s what we do,” Barnhart said.

What UK cannot do is control who is in the SEC.

Florida, the conference regular season and tournament champions, were the No. 1 overall seed and were placed in the South Region.  Tennessee will face Iowa on Wednesday in a First Round game for a chance to make the Round of 64 and placed in the Midwest Region with UK, Wichita State and company.

But no other SEC team made it into the NCAA Tournament field. Five teams with 19 or more wins were left out, including Arkansas, which swept UK, and Georgia, which tied UK for second place in the SEC regular season standings.

Barnhart admitted that there was a perception problem around the conference, but said that the perception that the SEC is one of the weakest conferences in the country is incorrect.

“Go look at some of the records of some of the teams in the other leagues, too,” Barnhart said. “There’s not that huge discrepancy that everybody wants to make it out to be.”

Calipari has been one of the loudest coaches in the league in lobbying for the conference.

“I don’t know where this image of our league is right now. But what we just did with Florida, does that mean they’re not very good? I mean, I guess if you say it enough and say it enough it becomes real.”

The one-point loss had little effect, good or bad, on UK’s NCAA Tournament placement. Calipari argued that a win would have produced little change in seeding either.

“They were not moving us around,” he said.

The SEC Tournament final finished about 25 minutes before the NCAA Tournament bracket went live on CBS. The 3:15 start time is set by television, Barnhart said. He questioned how important conference tournament championship games on Sunday are to the selection committee.

“If it does matter and it does have an effect on seedings and bracketing, then we need to think about that,” Barnhart said.

Calipari said the players did not react too much to the bracket announcement and the 8-seed slot. Senior guard Jon Hood said he did not know anything outside of 1-seed Florida and 2-seed Michigan and UK’s opponent. Other teams seeded in the region includes 3-seed Duke and 4-seed Louisville, whom the Cats beat in December.

Any thoughts of rivalry games will have to be muted in lieu of getting past Kansas State, sophomore forward Willie Cauley-State said.

“It didn’t really matter who we play,” Cauley-Stein said. “We just have to show up and play.”

Midwest Region: Round of 64

1.) Wichita State vs. 16.) Cal Poly/Texas Southern winner

8.) UK vs. Kansas State

5.) Saint Louis vs. NC State/Xavier winner

4.) Louisville vs. Manhattan

6.) Massachusetts vs. Iowa/Tennessee winner

3.) Duke vs. Mercer

7.) Texas vs. Arizona State

2.) Michigan vs. Wofford