Michigan State Basketball: Spartans on track to start NCAA Tournament in Detroit
By Zac Snyder
With a good seed in the 2018 NCAA Tournament, the Michigan State Spartans could be rewarded with the opportunity to start close to home.
Michigan State entered the 2017-18 college basketball season as one of the favorites to contend for a spot in the Final Four. If all goes according to plan, their tournament march would start close to home as Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena is a host site for the opening weekend of the 2018 NCAA Tournament.
The Spartans haven’t exactly been mowing through the competition but there haven’t been enough bumps in the road to knock them off track for Detroit.
With the NCAA emphasizing proximity in assigning teams to sites for the first two rounds, the top seeded teams get assigned to the nearest sites. Generally speaking, a team with a top four seed can expect to stay close to campus if there is a site in their own backyard.
Michigan State starts the week as a two seed in Joe Lunardi’s bracketology on ESPN and a three seed according to Jerry Palm on CBS Sports. That’s good enough to put the Spartans in Detroit according to Lunardi. Palm doesn’t go the extra step to list sites in his projections but there could be an issue for Michigan State if things turn out more like Palm’s projections.
Palm has Xavier as a two seed and Detroit is about 20 miles closer to Xavier’s campus than Nashville. Would the NCAA hold firm on sending teams to sites based on distance when a marginal difference by sending Xavier to Nashville would make more sense for keeping Michigan State closer? For what it’s worth, Palm said on Twitter that he has Xavier in Nashville.
Purdue gets a one seed from both Lunardi and Palm and would be guaranteed for Detroit based on distance. Assuming the Boilermakers keep on the path they are going, that would lead to a first round (Friday) session in Detroit consisting of Purdue taking on a 16 seed and a game between and eight seed and a nine seed.
Under the scenario in which Michigan State is a two seed in Detroit, the other first day session would see the Spartans take on a 15 seed with a 7/10 matchup in the other game.
Winners from each pod would meet in a doubleheader on Sunday ticketed as one session.
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The Detroit metro region last hosted NCAA Tournament games in 2013 when both Michigan State and Michigan earned the right to start close to home. The third-seeded Spartans defeated Valparaiso and Memphis to advance to the Sweet 16 while the fourth-seeded Wolverines rolled past South Dakota State and VCU to punch their ticket to the tournament’s second weekend.