NCAA Tournament Regions Ranked

As always, there are four regions in the NCAA Tournament: the East, South, West, and Midwest. Each region winner will advance to the Final Four but what region has the most talent and will feature the toughest path to make it out? All the regions are challenging. Let's look at the strength of each region ranked from the toughest to the softest.

The East is considered to be the toughest region in the NCAA Tournament. This is the case for multiple reasons.

The first reason is that this region has the No. 1 overall seed UConn. UConn is the betting favorite to win the tournament and is the undisputed No. 1 ranked team in the nation. They have lost just three games all year and made fairly easy work of the Big East Tournament.

The second seed in the East is the Iowa State Cyclones. This team is coming off of a massive win in the Big 12 Championship game over Houston who they beat by more than 20 points. Houston was the No. 1 team in the nation for most of the season and Iowa State made them look like a team who shouldn’t even be in the tournament.

Purdue has been dominant and will lead this region as the one seed. Some of the top contenders in this conference are all bunched up in the second round and Sweet 16. Gonzaga and Kansas are likely to face off in the second round and they aren’t even top three seeds. After that Purdue will likely have to face one of them in the Sweet 16. It’s a tough path at first for Purdue.

The reason why this isn’t the toughest region is because the two and three seeds are seen as two of the weakest in Tennessee and Creighton. With former No. 1 ranked team Kansas as the four seed and Gonzaga as the five, this region will be tough early on.

The South is a popular pick as the second-toughest region. Houston is the one seed but just lost by more than 20 points in their final game. It was one of only four losses all year for Houston but their non-conference schedule was pretty soft. They may be a bit overrated at this point.

As a No. 9 seed, Texas A&M may face Houston in the second round. Some people have Houston on upset alert in this potential matchup. Texas A&M is coming off a strong SEC tournament.

Duke is another team in the South that has a chance to make a tournament run. This team is undoubtedly one of the scariest four seeds in the tournament.

North Carolina is by far the weakest one seed and is a big reason why the West is seen as the weakest region. Arizona is also the No. 2 seed that played in a fairly easy PAC 12 Conference. Arizona lost in the PAC 12 Championship and maintained a two seed.

Third in the West is Baylor who lost 10 games this year and won just 23. An early exit in the Big 12 Tournament was uninspiring. A popular pick is for Baylor to get upset in the second round. Overall the West is not great compared to the other regions but somebody has to come out of it to represent them in the Final Four.