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USATSI

The Madness of March showed up Friday when Morehead State became the first No. 1 seed to lose in a conference tournament this postseason. The Eagles, champions of the Ohio Valley during the regular season, fell to Southeast Missouri State in the semifinals of the OVC Tournament. Tennessee Tech is now that conference's highest remaining seed (No. 2 seed). That conference championship will be decided today, which means we will have our first automatic qualifier for the 2023 NCAA Tournament. 

Saturday is also the final day for regular-season conference play except in the Big Ten and American Athletic Conferences, which finish on Sunday. Among the things still to be decided is the top seed in the ACC Tournament, which will be the winner of Pittsburgh at Miami.

The Pac-12 regular-season championship already belongs to UCLA, but the Bruins can start to make a case for a No. 1 seed with a win over Arizona on Saturday. The biggest thing holding UCLA back is that it doesn't have a win better than projected No. 7 seed Kentucky on its résumé. Kansas has seven wins against teams seeded better than the Wildcats. Alabama has three such wins and each of those teams have defeated Kentucky as well. Purdue has five wins better than UK and Houston has two.

UCLA is very good and on most people's short list of national title contenders. Today, the Bruins have a chance to show that is not just faith.

Bracketology top seeds

Check out Palm's latest bracket, full field of 68 and all the teams on the bubble on the Bracketology hub.

Two top seeds in action today are Kansas, which visits a Texas team looking to stop a two-game skid, and Alabama, which travels to Texas A&M as the Aggies look for their marquis win of the season. Tennessee is also at Auburn and will play its first full game without PG Zakai Zeigler. The Volunteers will be looking to show the selection committee that they can maintain their level of play without Zeigler in the lineup.

The committee has always said that it puts a little more weight on how a team plays with the roster it will take to the tournament; otherwise, the operative word in that sentence is "little". All the results, good or bad, still count. You might not even notice what consideration the committee gives for a roster issue.