Utah basketball draws first round matchup in Big 12 tournament

The Utah men's basketball program is about 72 hours away from playing in its first Big 12 tournament game under Alex Jensen.

The Runnin' Utes knew their place in the 16-team field well before Saturday's regular season finale at Baylor, but it wasn't until about an hour until tipoff from Waco that they found out their opponent for the first round of the conference tournament.

Utah, which will be the No. 16 seed when the tournament tips off March 10, will take on No. 9 Cincinnati (17-14, 9-9 Big 12) in an opening-round matchup set for 1 p.m. MT from T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri.

The Bearcats fell from the No. 7 to the No. 9 spot in the standings following their 73-63 loss at TCU Saturday, creating a three-team tie with UCF and West Virginia. The Mountaineers got the advantage due to their head-to-head record against the Knights and Bearcats (4-0), putting West Virginia in the No. 7 seed.

UCF, by virtue of its 1-1 record against Texas Tech, got the No. 8 spot ahead of Cincinnati, which lost its only game against the Red Raiders. Because both UCF and Cincinnati had the same league record (9-9) and split the head-to-head series (1-1), the tiebreaker came down to which had the better record against the top teams in the league. And since neither beat the No. 1 or No. 2 teams (Arizona and Houston), Texas Tech's loss to UCF on Jan. 31 wound up being the difference maker.

The dominoes of those tiebreakers sets up a rematch between Utah and Cincinnati in the Big 12 tournament. The first meeting between the two teams saw the Bearcats rally late in the second half to beat the Utes, 69-65, in a back-and-forth affair from Fifth Third Arena.

Cincinnati won three of its final five regular season games after that Feb. 15 contest, highlighted by an impressive 16-point victory over Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse.

When is the Big 12 Tournament?

The 2026 Big 12 men's basketball tournament from the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Missouri, is set for March 10-14. The first round tips off with a matchup between the No. 12 and No. 13 seeds from March 10 at 10:30 a.m. MT on ESPN+.

The top four seeds earn a bye to the quarterfinal round, set for March 12, while seeds 5-8 bypass the first round with an automatic berth into the second round (March 11).

The winner of the Utah-Cincinnati matchup will face No. 8 seed UCF in the second round on March 11 (noon, ESPNU).