The Louisville Cardinals will begin their title defense when they collide with the Manhattan Jaspers on Thursday night at the Amway Center in Orlando, Fla.

The Cardinals were surprisingly seeded No. 4, which is allegedly quite low for a defending champion, a team who is also coming off a convincing win over the Connecticut Huskies in the American Athletic Conference finals on Saturday.

But while eyebrows were raised after the Cardinals ended up as a fourth seed, head coach Rick Pitino said that he has nothing against the seeding, but he was disappointed about being pitted against the Jaspers, who is coached by Steve Masiello, who played under and coached with Pitino before.

"I think the pairings sometimes lack common sense," Pitino said of the Manhattan pairing, ESPN reported. "I don't think they would put somewhere down the road Duke-North Carolina so the matchups don't make sense to me. I'm OK with the seedings. I'm not OK with the matchups."

Senior guard Russ Smith, who leads the Cardinals in scoring with 18.3 points per game, will look to lead Louisville to their second straight title before turning pro in June, while Montrezl Harrell is expected to provide the much-needed support to hit their back-to-back title aspirations.

On the other hand, the Jaspers, who won the 2014 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, will lean on senior guards George Beamon and Michael Alvarado, who averaged 19.2 and 12.0 points per game this season, respectively.

The winner will next face either the Saint Louis Billikens or the North Carolina State Wolfpack, who are scheduled to meet at 7:20 p.m. EST also at the Amway Center.

In the other scheduled Midwest Region games on Thursday, the second-seeded Michigan Wolverines will collide with the 15th-seeded Wofford Terriers at the BMO Harris Bradley Center in Milwaukee.

Sophomore forward Glenn Robinson III, who is averaging 13.0 points and 4.3 rebounds per game this season, will look to lead the Wolverines to a return trip to the Final Four this year.

And should the Wolverines avoid the upset axe on Thursday, they will go up against the winner of the second-round showdown between seventh-seeded Texas Longhorns and 10th-seeded Arizona State Sun Devils in the next round.

TV Schedule and Live Stream

The Saint Louis-NC State and Louisville-Manhattan matches will be shown live via TNT at 7:10 p.m. EST and 9:50 p.m. EST, respectively.

CBS will broadcast the Michigan State-Wofford and Texas-Arizona State games at 7:20 p.m. EST and 9:40 p.m. EST, respectively.

Live stream of Thursday's Midwest Region games will be available via March Madness Live.