When you look at the 2011 NCAA tournament, specifically the Sweet 16 bracket, the first thing you notice is the Kansas Jayhawks have an "easy" road to the Final Four. I put that in quotes because while, yes, they are playing a 12-seed and have the potential of playing a 10 or 11-seed, no game is truly easy at this time of year.
That's what KU basketball coach Bill Self said this week when talking about playing the Richmond Spiders. It's more about matchups rather than seeds at this point.
"After the selection show, it's not about seeds. It's about matchups. Everybody worries about their seed, and then that goes away and you worry about the teams. Before we played Memphis in 2008, the best game we had was against an 11 seed. How cool is it for the city of Richmond to have VCU and Richmond both in the same regional? For a town that size, that's amazing. Florida State is a BCS name, but those are all high-major players regardless of the name on the front of the shirt. All of the schools have great basketball tradition. Richmond's won big and been to the Sweet 16 before. It's about players now, and our guys know their guys can play."
There are parallels to the "easy" road to the Final Four that KU had in 2008, which is kind of interesting.
The city of Richmond is obviously jacked about this -- imagine the Kansas City area if Mizzou or K-State were still in the tourney -- so KU is going to get their best game.