Houston earned a top seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament and was the No. 2 overall seed in the 68-team field for March Madness.

The Cougars’ reward? A potential second-round matchup with ninth-seeded Auburn in a de facto home game for Bruce Pearl’s team in Birmingham.

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“Who’s the 8-9 in our bracket? Birmingham, right,” Houston coach Kelvin Sampson said when asked Sunday about Houston’s tournament draw. “So Auburn gets to play in Birmingham? Maybe we should have been a 9-seed.”

Houston went 31-3 this season and finished second in the final AP poll before the NCAA Tournament gets underway this week. The Cougars were the top-rated team in adjusted efficiency margin this season, according to KenPom, with the nation’s No. 11 adjusted offensive efficiency and No. 4 defensive efficiency.

Sampson’s team, which went 17-1 in conference play and won the American regular-season title, also finished as the top-ranked team in NET heading into the postseason, with a 7-2 record in Quad 1 games and an 8-0 mark in Quad 2 matchups. Houston finished as the runner-up in the AAC Tournament, falling to Memphis late Sunday afternoon in the league championship game that wrapped up shortly before the start of the NCAA Tournament selection show.

About half an hour after that game went final, Houston learned it officially earned one of the top seeds in this year’s field, drawing the No. 1 spot in the Midwest Region and would face 16th-seeded Northern Kentucky in the opening round of action Thursday night in Birmingham. While facing a 16-seed in the opening round all but assures Houston will advance to the Round of 32, Sampson seemed less than thrilled about the Cougars’ potential second-round matchup with the Tigers.

Auburn (20-12) earned the No. 9 seed in the Midwest Region and will face No. 8 seed Iowa in the opening round Thursday at 5:50 p.m. CT at Legacy Arena. The Tigers are a slight favorite in the matchup, according to KenPom.

It has been a slog of a season for Auburn, which started the year 11-2 but went just 4-9 in its final 13 games, a stretch that included six losses by five points or fewer. Still, the Tigers earned an at-large bid on the strength of their nonconference performance and a crucial late-season win against Tennessee, the No. 4 team in the final NET rankings.

While Auburn is the lower-seeded team in its opening-round matchup with Iowa, the Tigers get the benefit of playing just a couple hours from their campus and in their home state by drawing Birmingham as their opening-weekend site. If Auburn can get by Iowa on Thursday, it would likely have a homecourt advantage against Houston in the second round, with an undoubtedly pro-Tigers crowd at Legacy Arena with a trip to the Sweet 16 on the line.

After initially bristling at being paired with Auburn in Birmingham, Sampson provided a more diplomatic response to his team’s path to a potential Final Four in their own city of Houston — a draw that would include playing the Sweet 16 and Elite 8 in Kansas City — without getting ahead of himself.

“You know what? Congrats — first of all, congratulations to every school that made the tournament,” Sampson said. “I never lose sight of how hard it is to make the tournament, regardless of your seed. There’s some really good teams this year that had great years that came up just a little bit short. Might have been because of an injury, might have been they lost a heartbreaker because of free throws or somebody throw up a shot at the buzzer, whatever. But it’s hard to make the tournament…. Every game is hard. Hard to make the tournament. It’s hard to win a game in the tournament.

“But we’re honored. We’re honored to make it. We’re honored to be a 1 seed. But our kids have earned the right to be a 1 seed. Happy for our program, but more importantly, I’m happy for our kids who did all the work.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.