NCAA Tournament

The NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee tabbed Baylor, Kansas, Gonzaga and San Diego State as the four No. 1 seeds in its initial preview of the 2020 March Madness field Saturday.

This marked the fourth year in a row the committee has provided an early look at which teams would own the top 16 seeds in the NCAA tournament.

Here is a full rundown of the top 16 seeds, courtesy of the NCAA March Madness Bracket Preview special on CBS:

South Region

1. Baylor (No. 1 overall seed)

2. Louisville (7)

3. Seton Hall (11)

4. Auburn (13)

Midwest Region

1. Kansas (2)

2. Dayton (6)

3. Florida State (10)

4. Michigan State (16)

West Region

1. Gonzaga (3)

2. West Virginia (8)

3. Villanova (12)

4. Oregon (14)

East Region

1. San Diego State (4)

2. Duke (5)

3. Maryland (9)

4. Butler (15)

It was no surprise the Baylor Bears would be the No. 1 overall seed in the tournament given the fact they received 49 of the 65 first-place votes in the most recent Associated Press Top 25 poll.

Baylor is the team to beat in the Big 12 with a 20-1 record and 9-0 mark in conference play. In fact, the Bears have won 19 games in a row since losing to Washington in their second game of the season.

Head coach Scott Drew has helped lead the Bears to a number of quality wins, including over Villanova, Arizona, Butler, Texas Tech and Kansas.

Baylor doesn't have a superstar, but with Jared Butler, MaCio Teague and Freddie Gillespie all averaging double figures in scoring, it is a well-balanced and deep team that will be a tough out come tournament time.

Though it was somewhat surprising they were given the No. 2 overall seed over Gonzaga, the 19-3 Kansas Jayhawks were a sensible pick because of their resume and impressive collection of talent.

Kansas is 8-1 in Big 12 play, with its only loss coming to Baylor. The Jayhawks' other two losses were against highly touted teams in Duke and Villanova.

While Bill Self's team doesn't have a ton of wins that jump off the page, victories over Dayton, Colorado, West Virginia and Texas Tech were meaningful.

Thanks to the inside-outside combination of center Udoka Azubuike and guard Devon Dotson, the Jayhawks may be the team to beat come tournament time, regardless of their ranking.

The Gonzaga Bulldogs were a no-brainer choice for a No. 1 seed as well after garnering 15 first-place votes in the latest AP poll.

The Zags have lived at or near the top of the rankings in recent years, and this season has been no different. At 24-1 overall and 10-0 in West Coast Conference play, this year's team may be one of the best ever under head coach Mark Few.

Gonzaga's only loss came against Michigan, and while it can be argued that the Zags play in a weak conference, they still have impressive non-conference wins over Oregon, Washington, Arizona and North Carolina.

The team experienced some turnover from last season to this season, but it hasn't mattered. Few has a remarkable seven players averaging at least 9.9 points per game, including Filip Petrusev, who leads the Bulldogs with 17.2 points and 7.8 rebounds per contest.

The San Diego State Aztecs are the only undefeated team in Division I at 23-0, and that helped them earn the final No. 1 seed.

While San Diego State plays in the Mountain West Conference, it owns victories over big-conference teams in Creighton, Iowa and Utah. The Aztecs have yet to beat a ranked squad, however.

Head coach Brian Dutcher has SDSU firing on all cylinders, and it would be tough to penalize the Aztecs for a weak conference when Gonzaga tends to get the benefit of the doubt.

Regardless of their affiliation, the Aztecs are a talented team, and led by guard Malachi Flynn, they have a chance to do damage in March.

The committee divulged there was a significant gap from the No. 4 overall seed to No. 5, but there were strong teams among the No. 2 seeds, including Atlantic Coast Conference powers Duke and Louisville plus the 20-2 Dayton Flyers, who are dominating the Atlantic 10 Conference.

As noted by the committee on CBS, nine of the 12 teams chosen as No. 1 seeds in the tournament preview over the past three years have been No. 1 seeds in the actual tournament, and those that haven't have been No. 2 seeds.

There is still more than a month of basketball to be played between now and the end of conference tournaments, so the top 16 seeds could change significantly during that time.

The final seeds will be determined and revealed in just over a month on the Selection Sunday show, which will air on CBS on March 15.

Here's a word problem for you: If the Big Ten—which has 14 schools—sends 12 of those teams to the 2020 men's NCAA tournament, how many people are going to complain about it?

The answer is an awful lot, but it's time to start bracing for that possibility.

In most college basketball seasons, it's difficult to say with any certainty which conference is the best. As of late, it's usually the Big 12 as far as KenPom.com is concerned, but there are almost always two other leagues breathing right down its neck with a good argument for why they belong in the top spot.

This year, there's no such debate.

On Tuesday morning, the Big Ten had 12 of the top 36 teams on KenPom. In a sport with 353 teams at the D-I level, that can otherwise be read as one-third of the top 10 percent.

Compare that to one year ago, when the Big Ten—which was pretty solid top to bottom and sent eight teams to the NCAA tournament—finished the year with only five teams in the top 36.

Here's the thing about the Big Ten, though: Everyone (except for Nebraska and Northwestern) is good, but no one is great.

Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State each spent multiple weeks ranked in the Top 5 of the AP poll, but no one in the league is better than No. 15 at the moment.

As a result, the gap between the best team in the conference (arguably Michigan State) and the 12th-best team (arguably Indiana) is almost negligible. Per KenPom, the Hoosiers have a 43 percent chance of winning their home game against the Spartans later next week, even though Pomeroy's site is much higher on Michigan State (No. 6) than the AP voters are (No. 15).

For the sake of comparison: In the similarly sized ACC, Duke is projected to win by 11 at 12th-best North Carolina.

That "any Big Ten can beat any other Big Ten team at home" frame of mind certainly tracks with what has transpired thus far, as the home team is 35-6 in Big Ten play. Wisconsin has been the odd ball, losing at home to Illinois but winning at Penn State and Ohio State. However, aside from games involving the Badgers—and a few hosted by Nebraska or Northwestern—it's pretty much expected at this point that the home team is going to win every league game.

And if that trend continues for the next seven weeks, the Big Ten is going to make NCAA tournament history.

Conventional wisdom suggests there's no chance that a 14-team league can send 12 squads to the Big Dance. The Big East set the record with 11 bids in 2011, but that was also a 16-team league. The 15-team ACC had a few nine-bid years recently, but nine out of 15 (60 percent) is a heck of lot different from 12 out of 14 (85.7 percent).

While noting that he had 12 Big Ten teams in his latest bracket projection for NCAA.com, Andy Katz said: "There's no way, I don't see that happening long term. They're going to cannibalize each other. Some teams are going to fall out."

Are we sure about that?

KenPom currently has 12 Big Ten teams projected to finish 9-11 or better in league play. Each of those teams already has multiple Quadrant 1 wins—the Big East has the next-most with seven teams boasting at least two Q1 victories—and it's reasonable to assume all 12 would pick up at least three more in the process of reaching its projected win total.

Moreover, there's not a single Quadrant 4 loss in the bunch, and those 12 teams have suffered a combined total of five Quadrant 3 losses—Purdue and Iowa both lost at Nebraska, Illinois dropped a home game against Miami and Rutgers and Penn State lost to St. Bonaventure and Ole Miss, respectively, on neutral floors. And basically every game the rest of the way for all 12 teams will fall into the top two Quadrants.

Most important of all is the refrain that will be repeated on a near-hourly basis for the next 50 or so days: We have to get to 68 teams somehow.

The ACC is a hot mess this year and may well send only four teams to the NCAA tournament.

Neither the Pac-12 nor the SEC is in much better shape. Each possesses four solid tournament resumes and a couple of bubble teams.

Both the A-10 and the Mountain West are looking like one-bid leagues if Dayton and San Diego State can secure the automatic bids.

The West Coast Conference might be a three-bid league, but both BYU and Saint Mary's are one misstep away from falling by the wayside.

And aside from Liberty and maybe Northern Iowa, there isn't even a minor-conference darling out there threatening to steal an at-large bid if it happens to lose in its conference championship game. (Liberty theoretically could win every game between now and the Atlantic Sun title game, finish 31-2 and still get left out because of how awful its schedule is.)

But—and say it with me here—we have to get to 68 teams somehow.

If Penn State does finish in 12th place in the Big Ten with a 9-11 record, it would enter the Big Ten tournament at 19-12 overall. The Nittany Lions already have six wins over the top two Quadrants, and their only non-Q1 loss was a 74-72 neutral-site game against Ole Miss. And as things currently stand in the NET, they have eight Q1, three Q2 and three Q3 games remaining—plus whatever comes their way in the Big Ten tournament.

It's a similar story for Indiana, which suffered one forgivable non-conference loss (Arkansas) while also picking up good wins over Florida State, Notre Dame and Connecticut. If the Hoosiers finish 19-12 (9-11 in Big Ten), they should be golden.

Considering Ohio State got in last year with an 8-12 league record and a 19-14 overall record, it's hard to imagine Penn State or Indiana would get left out with that type of resume. And again, we're only looking at the teams projected to finish in 11th and 12th in the league. The path to the tournament only gets easier the further up the ladder you go.

They need to maintain the status quo, though. This hypothetical goes up in smoke if Northwestern starts winning road games or if a few teams separate from the pack and end up winning 14 or more conference games.

Regardless of how this ends, 12 teams from one conference in the projected field in mid-January is uncharted waters.

Data and records current through the start of play on Thursday.

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.