West Virginia is going dancing.
The Mountaineers earned the No. 9 seed in the South Region and will open the NCAA Tournament against No. 8 Maryland at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Alabama, on Thursday. Game time is set for 12:15 p.m.
"I think obviously they’re excited to play," WVU head coach Bob Huggins said in a Zoom with reporters immediately following Sunday's tournament selection show. "They weren’t jumping up and down, but they were excited to play. I never had any doubt that we wouldn’t play in the tournament. I thought we were getting better and better."
WVU (19-14) had been on the bubble in the closing weeks of the regular season, but rallied late to earn a berth in college basketball’s biggest event.
The Mountaineers closed the regular season with wins in three of their final four games - the only loss of the stretch was by two points to Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas - and opened last week’s Big 12 Championship with a first-round victory over Texas Tech. WVU lost 78-61 to eventual tournament runner-up and defending national champion Kansas in the Big 12 quarterfinals.
"I’m good with [the seed]. Obviously we wanted to win more games, but I think we just had some things happen," Huggins said. "We missed some free throws early on. Oklahoma state game, make four field goals at the end of the game and do a stupid thing at the end of the game. K-State game we were up 16 or 18 or something like that at halftime. The Texas Tech game we rolled the ball out of bounds for some reason.
"I think if you look back, certainly we were a team capable of winning another five or six games. If we do that and take care of that business, or even take care of half of them, look where we are."
The Mountaineers are 25th in the NET rankings and 17th in the KenPom Ratings.
Maryland (21-12) was the No. 6 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and, after beating Minnesota in the first game of the conference tournament, fell to Indiana in the quarterfinals on Friday.
"I’ll be honest, I haven’t watched very much," Huggins said of the upcoming opponent. "I haven’t hardly watched them at all. … I’ll have a much, much better idea in a day or two."
Alabama (29-5) won the SEC Tournament and was the top seed in the South Region. The Crimson Tide will face the winner of the First Four game between Texas A&M-Corpus Christi (23-10) and Southeast Missouri State (19-16) in Birmingham, and the winner of the first-round game will play the West Virginia/Maryland winner.
Other first-round games in the South Region feature No. 5 San Diego State (27-6) taking on No. 12 Charleston (31-3) and No. 4 Virginia (25-7) facing No. 13 Furman (27-7) in Orlando, Florida; No. 6 Creighton (21-12) playing No. 11 NC State (23-10) and No. 3 Baylor (22-10) playing UC Santa Barbara (27-7) in Denver, Colorado; and No. 7 Missouri (24-9) taking on No. 10 Utah State (26-8) and No. 2 Arizona (28-6) up against No. 15 Princeton (21-8) in Sacramento, California.
Purdue (29-5) was the No. 1 seed in the East Region, Houston (31-3) was the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region and Kansas (27-7) was the No. 1 seed in the West Region.
The Big 12 earned seven bids to the NCAA Tournament, with Oklahoma State, Oklahoma and Texas Tech the three that did not make the field.
The berth in the NCAA Tournament marks the 31st time in program history the Mountaineers have made the field, with the last coming in the 2020-21 season. WVU beat Morehead State in the first round that season in Indianapolis before falling to Syracuse in the second round.