BYU Basketball Gets a 6-Seed, Will Play 11-Seed Duquesne

The Cougars are going dancing. On Sunday, the NCAA named BYU as a 6-seed in the upcoming NCAA Tournament. The Cougars will face the 11-seed Duquesne Dukes in the first round in Omaha, Nebraska. The seed-line is surprising. On Sunday morning, 30 of the top bracketologists on the internet updated their projections and all 30 of them had BYU as a 5-seed.

BYU has a long history of being under-seeded in the NCAA Tournament. That trend continued despite BYU's affiliation with the Big 12 conference. 

Duquesne is coming off a conference championship win over VCU. This is their first NCAA tournament bid in 47 years. 

We'll dive into this matchup in detail later this week. On the surface, this looks like a fairly favorable matchup for BYU. Duquesne ranks 166th in offensive efficiency per KenPom. The Dukes do a lot of their damage on the defensive end where they rank 28th nationally.

BYU's offense against Duquesne's defense will be the top story of this matchup. BYU led the Big 12 in scoring this season, and they rank 11th nationally in adjusted offensive efficiency per KenPom. BYU will have to shoot it well to win this one. Duquesne has won its last eight games.

The winner of BYU-Duquesne will advance to the second round where they will play the winner of 3-seed Illinois and 14-seed Morehead State.

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