Champ Week takeaways: Top seeds and NCAA hosts set, but should UConn or UCLA be No. 1 overall?

Champ Week in the Power 4 conferences concluded Sunday with a pair of top seeds -- Duke (ACC) and UCLA (Big Ten) -- and a pair of No. 2 seeds -- Texas (SEC) and West Virginia (Big 12) -- winning the tournament titles. Those four leagues set the landscape of the NCAA bracket -- a combined 39 teams from the quartet are included in Sunday night's Bracketology projection -- so résumés are set and many of the NCAA tournament questions have been answered.

Now it is up to the selection committee to sort those answers. In between now and Selection Sunday when the bracket is revealed on March 15 (8 p.m. ET, ESPN), 23 more automatic bids will be decided as the full picture continues to come into view.

What were the biggest things we learned on Championship Sunday? Which teams might have benefited most from Champ Week so far? Which résumés took a hit? Let's take a deeper look at Champ Week, how it will shape the bracket and what can be expected on Selection Sunday.

How did Champ Week alter the No. 1 seeds?

Texas was the only vulnerable No. 1 seed entering Champ Week; how the SEC tournament shook out was going to determine the final spot on the 1-line. Vanderbilt and LSU were still in the mix entering Friday. By late Sunday afternoon the Longhorns had emphatically ended those hopes. Not only did Texas secure a top seed by beating South Carolina in the SEC final, and doing so in such a dominant fashion, the Longhorns surpassed the Gamecocks on the 1-line and are the No. 3 overall team.

That is significant because that allows Texas to be placed in one of the Fort Worth regionals. South Carolina now will have to go to Sacramento, while the Longhorns will only have to play 190 miles from home if they advance to the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight.

One more question has surfaced around the 1-seeds: Should UConn or UCLA be the overall No. 1? The Bruins' metrics -- 18 Quad 1 wins, the top wins above bubble number, the best strength of schedule -- suggest they should be first. However, the Huskies have sat in that spot all season and remain the nation's lone unbeaten team. More significantly, the NCAA selection committee put UConn at No. 1 overall in both of its top-16 reveals this season. At the time of each of those announcements -- Feb. 14 and March 1 -- UCLA also held an advantage in those metrics -- and the committee still went with the Huskies.

Nothing has changed on that front. Essentially, the committee has already spoken here, and UConn has been the consistent choice. The only element that has changed: The Bruins are now the Big Ten regular-season and tournament champions, with a Big Ten tournament finals performance that was near-perfect, beating Iowa by 51 points. If the committee decides to change its mind and flip UConn and UCLA, that will have to be the rationale, not the numbers.

Have the top-16 teams been settled?

All the teams involved in the conversation to be included in the top 16 are done playing, but there were shake-ups over the weekend. The biggest was the possible entry of West Virginia as a host of NCAA tournament games for the first time since 1992. The Mountaineers had not won a Big 12 tournament title since 2017 but were the better team from start to finish against regular-season champion TCU.

Kentucky had been vulnerable at No. 16 overall since losing to South Carolina on Friday in the SEC quarterfinals, but with Michigan State losing its first game in the Big Ten tournament and North Carolina and Ole Miss coming up one win short of what they needed to break through, falling in their respective tournament semifinals, it took until Sunday for a team to knock out the Wildcats from that final hosting spot.

The résumé of the last two teams in the top 16 -- Maryland and West Virginia -- and first few out -- Kentucky, North Carolina, Michigan State -- show just slight differences, but the Mountaineers are the only one with a championship.

Sunday's loss likely cost the Horned Frogs a No. 2 seed, which they had just gained on Saturday after Michigan's loss to Iowa. Duke was the beneficiary. By winning the ACC tournament title after capturing the regular-season crown, the Blue Devils now have a claim to the final slot on the No. 2 line.

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UCLA routs Iowa for second straight Big Ten title

No. 2 UCLA Bruins defeat No. 9 Iowa Hawkeyes 96–45 to capture back-to-back Big Ten titles.

How has Champ Week impacted the bubble so far?

This is the stickiest bubble in years. There are more teams involved with more pros and cons for inclusion than the selection process has seen in a while.

South Dakota State probably had the best weekend. The Jackrabbits had been on the wrong side of the bubble, on the outside looking in, for weeks. But they made that irrelevant by winning the Summit League championship and claiming an automatic bid. Selection Sunday will be much less stressful in Brookings, South Dakota, now.

Arizona State helped itself the most of any of the teams remaining in the at-large pool by winning two games in the Big 12 tournament, including an upset of Iowa State, and playing competitively with West Virginia in the quarterfinals. The Sun Devils are 51 in the NET and still don't have a Quad 1 win, but their 12-9 record against the NET top 100 is easily the best among bubble teams, so they get the nod.

So does Richmond, but for different reasons. The Spiders stumbled badly in a Atlantic 10 semifinal loss to George Mason on Saturday, and they appeared to be out of the field. But later that day, Harvard upset Columbia, knocking the Lions out of first place in the Ivy League and the conference's presumed automatic bid. That left Princeton as the Ivy's lone NCAA tournament team, opening another spot in the field. Richmond took it and got right back in. When Ivy Madness is played Thursday and Friday, the Spiders could once again be on the outside if Princeton falters and a second Ivy League team returns to the field.

Nebraska is another team on the fringes because of an earlier-than-expected Champ Week exit. The Cornhuskers, who went 2-6 in February, blew a 20-point lead to Indiana to fall in the first round of the Big Ten tournament. But Nebraska's full body of work includes a NET of 28. While it's not unprecedented for a team with a ranking that high to be left out (Oregon in 2023), it is rare. In a year without any more obvious choices, Nebraska, despite a disappointing Champ Week, might just hang on to a bid.

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Duke wins the ACC Tournament title after beating Louisville in OT

The Blue Devils held off the Cardinals to claim the ACC Tournament championship.

Which teams should be worried or encouraged by Champ Week?

Encouraged: Ohio State. The Buckeyes solidified their spot in the top 16 and gave UCLA its most competitive game in a month in the Big Ten tournament semifinals. Jaloni Cambridge is a budding star who is good enough to carry the Buckeyes to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament.

Worried: Tennessee. The Lady Vols, the only team to play in every women's NCAA tournament since its inception in 1982, have not played well since the start of February and are only 16-13. And while a NET of 23 and five Quad 1 wins mean they shouldn't be in any jeopardy of missing the tournament for the first time, there is little evidence to suggest a long stay. The SEC tournament represented a chance to right the ship, but the Lady Vols were one-and-done, losing to Alabama.

Encouraged: Notre Dame. The Fighting Irish are playing their best basketball of the season and were a couple of better possessions away from upsetting Duke in the ACC tournament semifinals one day after beating NC State. Hannah Hidalgo has scored more than 25 points in six of her last seven games, and the one she missed was a 24-point performance in the ACC tournament loss to the Blue Devils. ACC teams play against Hidalgo regularly and still haven't been able to stop her. Now the Irish will only face teams unfamiliar with her style.

Worried: South Carolina. Did Texas expose something in South Carolina or was Sunday's SEC tournament final just a bad day for the Gamecocks? Dawn Staley will no doubt pull apart that game tape and attempt to fix what went wrong, but when a South Carolina team falls behind 14-0, gets outrebounded, scored a season-low 61 points and gives up 40 points in the paint, it's worthy of the question. Perhaps it's just a matchup issue with Texas. The Longhorns also held South Carolina to 64 points in their first meeting in November and to 68 in mid-January. Georgia was the only other SEC team to hold South Carolina in the 60s, and now the soonest the Gamecocks would likely have to face Texas again would be in the national championship game.