Sunday selection bracket revealed: Iowa State Cyclones earn No. 3 seed in East region

The Iowa State men’s basketball team will be heading to San Antonio, Texas, to take on MEAC champion North Carolina Central on Friday.

Mar 15, 2014; Kansas City, MO, USA; Iowa State Cyclones forward Georges Niang (31) celebrates after cutting part of the net after the win against the Baylor Bears in the championship game of the Big 12 Conference college basketball tournament at Sprint Center. Iowa State won 74 – 65. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports

Both teams will open up play in the second round of the NCAA tournament on Friday. Tip-off time has yet to be determined and will be announced later tonight. The Cyclones were awarded the 3 seed while the Eagles (that’s the NC Central mascot, because I know you don’t know) are obviously the 14th seed.

NC Central got the automatic berth from winning the MEAC championship. If that acronym sounds familiar, it should. That’s the same conference that has Hampton, who defeated Iowa State when they were a 2 seed in the NCAA tournament in 2001. Hampton finished second overall in the conference but didn’t make the championship game.

Obviously, Iowa State fans will be a little bit concerned, but this is a match-up that really favors the Cyclones, which we’ll go into detail more this week.

In fact, the bracket overall favors Iowa State. The other top four seeds in the bracket are Virginia with the top seed, Villanova with the two seed, and Michigan State with the four seed. That meeting against the Spartans would worry Cyclone fans more after what happened in 2000.

Ugh, this bracket is bringing back so many bad memories!

Facing either Virginia or Michigan State would be the toughest matchup, but that wouldn’t happen until the Elite Eight round. That could be a very likely scenario for Iowa State.