Bill Self sees Auburn potentially facing Louisville in Kentucky as 'shocking'

The NCAA Tournament seeding will never make every team completely happy. Still, in 2025, there have been several choices that have led to some extra criticism, including from Kansas Jayhawks head coach Bill Self.

In the case of Self and Kansas, the Jayhawks earned a seven-seed in the NCAA Tournament. That got them sent to Providence, rather than the closer by Wichita. That’s despite some other lower seeds getting games closer to home. Among those is Louisville, who will be playing in Lexington, where they could have an effective home game in the second round against one-seed Auburn.

“You know, I haven’t studied that,” Bill Self said. “I was kind of surprised Missouri got sent to Wichita, considering Texas Tech is going to have to play them in then if both teams win, if the higher seeds win. You’re telling me that Louisville is sent to Lexington? And if they win they’ve got Auburn and Auburn’s got to play Louisville in Lexington? That shocks me.”

There are other examples of this in this year’s NCAA Tournament. However, for Self, the 27-7 and 18-2 in ACC play Louisville Cardinals potentially getting to play against Auburn in the state of Kentucky is the biggest surprise.

“The other one was Illinois to Milwaukee, as a six-seed,” Self said. “The three-seed there is who? [Iowa State]. Well, Iowa State will travel regardless. So, that’ll probably be a 50/50 — and that’s TJ [Otzelberger’s] hometown. So, I would say I’m more shocked by the former with Louisville playing potentially Auburn in Lexington.”

The reality, however, is that Bill Self isn’t overly concerned. His focus is going to be on the Arkansas Razorbacks, and not Auburn’s rough draw in a potential Round of 32 matchup.

“I like Bruce Pearl a lot but I’m not really thinking about that particular game at this particular time. We didn’t deserve to be playing in Wichita. So, there’s absolutely no thought that that would ever happen, that it would ever actually occur,” Self said. “But I am shocked it did happen that way in Lexington.”

North Carolina players call Louisville’s seeding ‘disrespectful’ to ACC

While getting to play in Lexington is a benefit, the Louisville Cardinals finishing as an eight-seed in the field as the second place finisher in the ACC caught plenty of people’s attention. That includes other ACC schools, like North Carolina, which had multiple players refer to Louisville’s seeding as disrespectful.

“Yeah, Louisville had a really good year and I feel like an 8 seed was kind of disrespectful to them,” RJ Davis said. “But then I didn’t really know where we were going to end up at. It was kind of just like a guessing game, like what seed they were going to be. So, yeah.”

Along with RJ Davis, Seth Trimble also called out the seeding. In particular, he was frustrated at how the ACC is being perceived by their seeding.

“I just took it as a sign of disrespect to our conference, honestly. I know we’ve had somewhat of a down year this year in the ACC,” Trimble said. “But I feel like every single year once it comes to March, the ACC does a great job. But I think it was just a little bit disrespectful. Louisville had a great year. They had a really good tournament run in the ACC Tournament. That’s all I really saw it as. I wasn’t worried about it for us.”

Whether it’s for where they’re playing or what seed they got, there is clearly plenty of controversy around how the selection committee handled Louisville. Because of that, the Cardinals have quickly become an interesting team to follow this March.