Roy Williams, who dined on wife Wanda’s brownies and banana pudding at a Kansas University basketball team party Sunday afternoon, quickly lost his appetite during the NCAA Tournament selection show on CBS.

“I told my wife I hoped I didn’t get up here and act like a raving lunatic,” KU’s 15th-year coach said, referring to his Sunday-night news conference to discuss KU’s No. 2 seeding in the West Regional and first-round matchup against Utah State approximately 8:40 p.m. Thursday in Oklahoma City.

An animated Williams was “confused, mystified and in some ways ticked off,” to learn the Big 12 Conference was awarded two No. 1 seeds by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee and that neither of the top seeds went to 25-7 Kansas, the regular-season champion.

Texas (22-6) was awarded the No. 1 seed in the South Regional while Oklahoma (24-6), which beat Missouri in the Big 12 tournament title game Sunday, will be No. 1 in the East. Kentucky (29-3) and Arizona (25-3) are the top seeds in the Midwest and West, respectively.

The No. 2 seeds are KU, Pittsburgh, Florida and Wake Forest.

“I told our team today if Oklahoma won the conference tournament, Oklahoma would be a No. 1 seed,” said Williams, who watched the selection show with his wife and players at his Alvamar home.

“I thought Pitt would be a No. 1 seed after being co-champions in the (Big East) regular season and winning the postseason tournament. And Arizona and Kentucky would be No. 1 seeds. The fact Texas is a No. 1 seed and shipping us out West was a bit of a shock.”

While Williams said he “loved Texas, Rick Barnes and T.J. Ford” and said the Longhorns were worthy of a No. 1, he couldn’t help compare UT’s case with the Jayhawks’ case for a top seed.

Texas, which lost to KU during the regular season, finished third in the league and lost in the Big 12 quarterfinals, while the Jayhawks won a game in Dallas before falling to Missouri in Saturday’s semifinals.

“If you are going to say the regular season means a lot … we won the regular season and we go one game farther than Texas in the postseason tournament and (won) head to head,” Williams explained.

Kansas coach Roy Williams struggles to come up with an answer for why KU is a No. 2 seed for the NCAA Tournament. Williams said Sunday during a news conference that he was confused about why Texas was tapped as a No. 1 seed. The Jayhawks will open Thursday with Utah State at the Ford Center in Oklahoma City.

“I just wonder what would have happened if the season ended after we beat Missouri a week ago. Most people had us a No. 1 seed at that time. Since then we won one game in the tournament.

“I’m just flat out confused,” Williams added, noting “you’ve never heard me complain about the committee in 15 years. I think they have left more holes and didn’t answer any questions more than any time the committee has ever been (in existence).”

Williams was surprised No. 3 West Regional seed Duke was being shipped to Salt Lake City for its first two games in spite of the “pod” system which tries to keep top four seeds in their own regions. He also was baffled Kentucky and Arizona, the top two teams in the field, were placed on the same side of the bracket, meaning they’d meet in the Final Four semis, and not in the national title game if all goes according to plan.

“To have them on the same side of the bracket and say that’s not your job, I think it is their job,” Williams said of the committee members.

Kansas senior Nick Collison answers questions from the media during a gathering. The Jayhawks discussed being a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament among other things Sunday. KU will open against Utah State Thursday at Oklahoma City.

“This tournament makes so daggum much money for everybody involved they tell you what kind of cups you’ve got to sit with at press conferences. You ought to be able to figure the best teams and put them in opposite brackets if they do go all the way to the Final Four.”

Williams was flabbergasted by the difficult West Regional. The KU-Utah State winner would meet either Memphis or Arizona State on Saturday. The winner of that game would advance to Anaheim, Calif., to face possible third-round foe in Duke with Illinois and Arizona waiting in the wings.

“The whole West Regional is mind-boggling,” Williams said. “Duke won its conference tournament; Illinois won its tournament and Illinois is seeded lower than Florida that got a 2 seed.

“You know how you can tell the West is the toughest?” he added. “You ever seen all those guys on TV (announcers) agree? Every one of ’em said it was the toughest. I’ve never seen them all agree until this year.”

Williams was saddened his team’s rugged regular-season schedule and regular-season crown apparently didn’t matter much.

“We played 12 teams that made the tournament and played 15 games against teams that made the tournament field,” Williams said. “I would like to know who played more games against teams in the tournament than we did.”

At Williams’ request, KU sports information director Mitch Germann had his staff concoct a study Sunday night that indicated KU played more games and faced more tourney teams than any team in the field.

Kentucky was second with 14 games played against 11 tourney teams. Oklahoma played 14 games against 10 tourney teams; Missouri 14 against nine teams; Arizona 14 against eight teams. Purdue played 13 games against nine tourney teams and Arizona 12 against eight teams.

“I preach to my team all year the regular season is really important. Maybe I shouldn’t do that any more,” Williams said. “I don’t know if it does much good playing a big-time schedule.”

It’s been speculated the NCAA committee believed KU was a weaker squad without the injured Wayne Simien.

“Maybe they said we don’t have Wayne Simien or maybe they predicted we weren’t as good as we’ve proven. I think we showed we’re pretty doggone good,” Williams said.

Williams said he would not complain to any tourney committee members.

“I can be mystified. I can be confused and I can be ticked off, but if we’d played the way we ought to have played in Dallas it would have taken care of everything,” Williams said of the Big 12 tourney. “The bottom line is we’ve got to play. I told the players if we go out and play we can sit back and tell ’em (committee) how bad a job they did. If we don’t play they’ll say, ‘That dummy Williams didn’t know what he was talking about.'”