Although Panther head coach Rick Samuels will not know when, where and who his team will play in the NCAA Regional next week, he and his coaching staff are already making preparations.

Samuels will not know what seed his team will receive or what regional they’ll play in until the NCAA Selection Show airs at 5:30 p.m. Sunday on CBS. While the veteran head coach, who is in the midst of his 21st season, doesn’t know what seed his team will get, he does have some guesses.

“My gut says we’d get a 14 seed,” he said. “If we get a 13, great. If we get a 15, then we’ll go play, and that’s possible, too.

“We looked it up on the Internet the other day and the OVC is the 16th rated conference, so there’s 15 leagues below us,” Samuels said. “So there’s got to be some of those teams coming out of some of those leagues that will be lower seeds, so that’s why I’m thinking 14.”

The NCAA Tournament is made up of four different regionals (West, Midwest, South and East) at eight different first-round sites (San Diego, Boise, Kansas City, Mo., Dayton, Ohio, New Orleans, Memphis, Greensboro, N.C. and Long Island, N.Y.). Samuels is also fairly confident in predicting where his team will end up in the first round.

“I’d be shocked if we go anywhere in the East, because there’s so many teams in the East,” he said. “My thinking would be if they can’t fit us in the Midwest bracket, we’ll go west.

“They’ve got to pay expenses, so they’ll hold the line on expenses as best they can,” Samuels said. “I’d be thrilled if we had a location that we could get some fans to, because our fan support has really been an integral part of this year’s team. We’d love to see them there in the tournament.”

Samuels’ speculation doesn’t stop there. He’s even starting to scout out possible first-round opponents. On a dry erase board in the basketball office, Samuels has listed the No. 6 through No. 22 teams in the nation, possible first-round opponents for the Panthers.

“We’re anticipating either a 14, maybe a 13 seed, so with that in mind, we’re kind of speculating that’s who we might play,” Samuels said pointing at the board. “These teams could be three or four seeds.”

With that list of possible opponents, Samuels and his coaching staff have already started doing their homework.

“All of those teams have their conference tournaments this week, so we’re going to film them,” he said. “We’re going to videotape as many of them as we can, so when we get our assignment Sunday, maybe we’ll have a tape we can sit down and start watching right away.

“I already taped the Florida-Kentucky game Sunday,” Samuels said. “When the tournaments start rolling around this week, we’ll tape as many of those games as we can get.”

And if Samuels isn’t able to tape his opponent this week, he has several back up plans.

“The big time schools have those satellite systems and they’ve got libraries, game tape libraries,” he said. “Illinois has one. Purdue’s got one. Iowa’s got one. We’ve called all those places and said, if we draw somebody and you can share a tape with us, now if we draw somebody out of the Big 10 probably Purdue and Iowa won’t give us a tape.

“But let’s say we play Wake Forest and Illinois has two or three game tapes of them, because they tape all the games they can in case they draw those teams in the NCAA Tournament…So we’ve already contacted those three places,” Samuels said.

And if that doesn’t work out for Samuels, he has another outstanding source.

“We’ve also contacted David Cason who was here with me two years ago and is now out at North Carolina,” he said. “And he’ll help if its anybody he can share tape with, because they’ve got tape libraries, too.”

So while the wheels have already begun to spin, they’ll go into hyper mode come Sunday night.

“As soon as we find out who we get, we’ll call David and if we can get a tape from him, he’ll Federal Express it to us the next day,” Samuels said. “If we get it from Illinois or Purdue, we’ll drive Sunday night and pick it up. So that’s the preparations we’re making. We’re always speculating.”