Boise State faces a daunting path in the NCAA Tournament. Check out the full bracket here
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March Madness for Boise State
Mountain West champion Boise State is a No. 8 seed in the NCAA Tournament. The Broncos open play against Memphis in Portland.
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Boise State faces a daunting path in the NCAA Tournament. Check out the full bracket here
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The Boise State men’s basketball team has had such a terrific season that the Broncos generated buzz as a possible Sweet 16 surprise in the NCAA Tournament.
That’s going to be incredibly difficult now.
The Broncos (27-7) drew a No. 8 seed in the West Region in the bracket announced Sunday — a lower seed than some analysts expected. Boise State gets to stay close to home and will face No. 9 Memphis (21-10), the American Athletic Conference tournament runner-up, in the first round at 11:45 a.m. MT on Thursday in Portland (TNT).
If the Broncos earn their first NCAA Tournament win, they’ll almost certainly meet overall No. 1 seed Gonzaga (26-3) in the second round Saturday. Boise State coach Leon Rice spent 11 years as an assistant coach at Gonzaga and is a good friend of Bulldogs coach Mark Few.
“Mark and I were talking before the (selection) show and boom, we got on the plane,” said Rice, whose team arrived back in Boise after 7 p.m. Sunday. “So we haven’t got a chance to talk yet.”
Gonzaga has finished second in the NCAA Tournament two of the past four seasons. The team is led by West Coast Conference Player of the Year Drew Timme and 7-foot-1 Chet Holmgren, who is one of the top prospects for the NBA Draft.
The Bulldogs open the tournament against No. 16 seed Georgia State.
The rest of the Broncos’ potential path in the West bracket likely would include No. 4 Arkansas or No. 5 UConn in the Sweet 16 and No. 2 Duke or No. 3 Texas Tech in the regional final.
“You just can’t think too far ahead in these situations,” Boise State’s Abu Kigab said. “You gotta handle business first, and it’s Memphis. If we lose to Memphis, we can’t play Gonzaga, so we’ve gotta beat Memphis first.”
The West Region’s third and fourth rounds are March 24 and 26 at the Chase Center in San Francisco.
“Just a really high-powered bracket,” CBS college basketball analyst Seth Davis said Sunday during the selection show.
Boise State won the Mountain West’s outright regular-season and tournament titles. However, the Broncos got a more difficult draw than one other Mountain West team.
Colorado State is a No. 6 seed in the South, where it will face No. 11 Michigan in the first round and potentially No. 3 seed Tennessee in the second round. The Volunteers won the Southeastern Conference, but they weren’t among the selection committee’s top eight seeds.
“It definitely fuels us,” Kigab said. “We’ve been underdogs the whole year. We’ve gotta just continue to prove it. I love it.”
San Diego State is a No. 8 seed in the Midwest, where it opens against No. 9 Creighton. The Aztecs likely would face No. 1 Kansas in the second round.
Wyoming also made the field from the Mountain West as a No. 12 seed and will face Indiana in the First Four.
This story was originally published March 13, 2022 at 5:32 PM.
