With a multitude of seniors and talented incoming freshmen, preseason expectations were high for the University of Memphis men's basketball team.
But now, with the Tigers receiving the eighth seed in the East regional, the odds don't favor Memphis to make a run to the Sweet 16 or beyond.
Memphis head coach Josh Pastner graded the Tigers' regular season as a B, but he acknowledged that what is done in tournament play is more important in the eyes of many.
"It says 'the road to the Final Four.' It does not say 'the road to the regular season,'" Pastner said. "I think for media, fans they're gonna say 'Hey, you gotta get to the second weekend.' I think that's fair. Let's do it. Let's get to the second weekend. We're good enough to do it."
It can be argued whether or not Memphis is good enough to make it to the Sweet 16, but the one thing that is set in stone is that the odds are not in their favor.
Since the NCAA tournament was expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the 116 winners of the first-round games between eighth and ninth seeds have advanced to the Sweet 16 just 15 times.
While few teams make it past the top seed they have to play in the second round, the teams that do have fared quite well. Of the 15 to make the Sweet 16, eight continued on to the Elite 8, five made the Final Four and two made it to the championship game.
The only team to win a championship as an eight or nine seed was eighth-seeded Villanova in 1985, which coincidentally took down the second-seeded Memphis State in the Final Four.
Eight and nine seeds have found success in recent years. In the 2013 tournament ninth-seeded Wichita State went all the way to the Final Four before falling to eventual-champion Louisville by only four points.
In 2011, eighth-seeded Butler made the championship game where they were finally defeated by Connecticut.
The U of M has been seeded eighth or ninth two other times since the tournament expansion in 1985. The Tigers were an eight seed in 2012, losing to ninth-seed St. Louis in the first round. The other time was back in 1988 when Memphis was a nine-seed and took down eighth-seeded Baylor before being defeated by Purdue in the round of 32.
Senior forward David Pellom said the Tigers are ready for the challenge, but he thinks they would have been seeded higher if not for the blowout loss to UConn in the U of M's first game of the American Athletic Conference Tournament.
"The night we lost to UConn the worst thing about it was getting the eight, nine, 10 seed," Pellom said. "If we would have won the tournament we would have been possibly the two, three, four seed, and that would have been fine with us as well. But the worst case for us to get an eight or nine seed, play George Washington then facing the winner of (Coastal Carolina) or Virginia. It's gonna be a tough battle, but we'll be prepared."
One-seed Virginia is the toughest obstacle in the Tigers' path on the road to the Sweet 16, but for the U of M to get a shot at the Cavaliers they'll have to win their opening round matchup first.
The Tigers start tournament action Friday against the ninth-seeded Colonials in Raleigh, N.C. Tipoff is set for 5:55 p.m., and TBS plans to broadcast the game nationally.
