Houston remains in excellent shape to land a top NCAA Tournament seed

Selection Sunday is less than a week away, and Houston is still in great position to land a top seed in the NCAA Tournament.

The latest projections Tuesday from prominent bracket analysts Joe Lunardi of ESPN and Jerry Palm of CBS still have Houston as the No. 1 seed out of the Midwest Region, just like in both of their updated brackets from last week.

In Lunardi’s latest projections, Houston will face No. 16 seed Omaha in the opening round of the Midwest Region. However, the site listed is Houston, and the other sites listed in the bracket pods are where the higher-seeded teams are located, which is not the case, as the NCAA men’s tournament is played at neutral sites.

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The assumption, though, is that Houston’s opening-round game will be at Wichita, which has been the projected location for several weeks now.

At any rate, the Houston-Omaha winner is on track to play the winner of the first-round game between No. 8 Mississippi State and No. 9 Creighton.

Alabama is slated to be the No. 2 seed, with St. John’s at No. 3 and Wisconsin at No. 4.

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Lunardi’s other top seeds are Auburn (South), Duke (East) and Florida (West).

Then in the latest projections from Palm, Houston is slated to take on No. 16 seed Bryant, which Palm lists will be in Wichita. That winner takes on the winner of the opening-round game between No. 8 UCLA and No. 9 Georgia.

Palm also has Tennessee as his projected No. 2 seed in the Midwest, followed by Wisconsin at No. 3 and Kentucky at No. 4. Houston’s Big 12 rivals Arizona and Kansas are projected to be the No. 6 and No. 7 seeds, respectively.

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Like Lunardi, Palm’s other top seeds are Auburn (South), Duke (East) and Florida (West).

Houston (27-4, 19-1 Big 12) wrapped up the conference’s regular season title for the second straight season. With last Saturday’s 65-61 win at Baylor, the Cougars have now won 23 of their last 24 ballgames.

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The Cougars are now in the Phillips 66 Big 12 Championship tournament in Kansas City, and will play a quarterfinal contest at 2 p.m. on Thursday.