Is Penn State the best No. 10 seed in the NCAA Basketball Tournament?

Penn State is the best No. 10 seed in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament

Penn State will return to the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for the first time since 2011 when the Nittany Lions face Texas A&M on Thursday night in a first-round matchup between the runners-up in the Big Ten and SEC tournament championship games. Texas A&M comes into the matchup as the higher seed and the favorite, but could Penn State be the best 10-seed in this year’s tournament?

CBS Sports sure thinks so.

CBS Sports went through each seed line in this year’s tournament to determine which team is the best at each seed. When it came to comparing Penn State to the other 10-seeds in the field this season, the Nittany Lions came out on top.

“The hot streak was powered by being one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the country (38.5% ranks No. 9 nationally) and having a senior point guard in [autotag]Jalen Pickett[/autotag] that can orchestrate the offense to make sure they get a good look from behind the arc,” CBS Sports in its explanation for naming Penn State the best 10-seed in the tournament. “Six of those eight wins in this streak have come against tournament teams, making Penn State a potential problem in the bottom of the Midwest Region.”

Penn State is the No. 10 seed in the Midwest region and come into the tournament on a bit of a hot streak. Before coming back to take Purdue down to the wire in the Big Ten championship game, the Nittany Lions closed out the regular season with wins over Northwestern and Maryland and followed that with Big Ten tournament victories over Illinois, Northwestern (again), and Indiana for a string of five victories over teams in the NCAA Tournament.

The other No. 10 seeds in the tournament include Boise State (West), USC (East), and Utah State (South).

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