Emerging from the sadness of the COVID cancellation last March, get ready for a renewal of the Madness one year later.
From bursting bubbles to an unprecedented bubble format in Indiana, this year’s NCAA Tournament promises to be unlike any other, at least off the court.
The 68-team field for the 2021 Big Dance was revealed Sunday night, and the uncertainty surrounding March Madness this year extends beyond the typical Cinderella upsets and runs that make it one of the most watched and anticipated sporting events on the calendar each year.
“Certainly, there were a lot of things that were different about this year’s selection process,” NCAA Tournament committee chair Mitch Barnhart said on the CBS Selection Show. “As you use the words pivots and pauses that we’ve had to deal with and protocols that have become part of our vernacular, it has become a part of the committee room and conversations, as well.
“Résumés being unequal, and all the different things and stops and starts, at the end of the day, we saw some really high quality, incredible basketball to evaluate as a committee.”
The top-overall seed, as expected, will be No. 1-ranked Gonzaga (26-0) in the West Region. The Bulldogs will try to become the first team since Indiana in 1976 to complete an undefeated season. The other No. 1 seeds are Baylor (22-2) in the South and two Big Ten schools: regular-season champion Michigan (20-4) in the East and the conference tournament winners, Illinois (23-6), in the Midwest.
“What we’ve been through this year and just to have this incredible run, to be on March 14 undefeated is crazy,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few told ESPN. “Really, we’ve carried the No. 1 target on our back all year. I think that’s an incredible accomplishment. That being said, heck yeah, we want to win a national championship.”
Beginning with the pushed-back First Four on Thursday — including Wichita State against Drake, and a heavyweight matchup between Michigan State and UCLA for the No. 11 seeds in the West and East, respectively — the 68-team field will play all 67 games in Indiana, mostly in Indianapolis, with the championship game slated for April 5 at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Other locations will include the Indiana Pacers’ home arena (Bankers Life Fieldhouse), Indiana University’s Assembly Hall in Bloomington and Purdue’s Mackey Arena in West Lafayette.
Interestingly, the Hoosiers (12-15) missed the tournament for the fourth straight time, although the Boilermakers (18-9) are in as a No. 4 seed facing North Texas in their first game.
Power conference schools such as Kansas, 2019 national champion Virginia and Duke — which didn’t qualify for the first time since 1995 — had to bow out of their conference tournaments due to positive COVID-19 tests within their programs. The NCAA will have replacement teams standing by if they or other schools from multi-bid conferences return positive results before the start of the tournament.
The “first four out” of Louisville, Colorado State, St. Louis and Ole Miss are the standby teams for those conferences. If a one-bid conference school withdraws, they will be replaced by another team from their conference.
Kansas (20-8) is seeded third in the West Region and is slated to play Eastern Washington in its first game, while Virginia (18-6) is seeded fourth in the same region and will face Ohio.
The traditional first two rounds of 64 and 32 also have been pushed back one day each — meaning those games will be played Friday through Monday, with the Sweet 16 slated to be played the following weekend (March 27-28).
As for local schools, Iona (12-5) — the fifth school taken to the tourney by first-year coach Rick Pitino — won the MAAC Tournament and will face Alabama as a No. 15 seed. Rutgers (15-11) will make its first NCAA appearance since 1991 as a 10-seed out of the Big Ten against Clemson in the Midwest Region.
Two adoptive teams with large local followings also made the field — Syracuse avoided the First Four and will face No. 6 San Diego State as the 11th seed in Midwest, while No. 7 Connecticut will play Maryland in the East Region after finishing 15-7 this season in its return to the Big East season after seven years in the American Athletic Conference.
“The team is excited, obviously,” UConn coach Dan Hurley said. “That was one of our goals going into the season to compete at the top of the Big East conference are then get into the NCAA tournament, We’ve been able to do both things this year, so it was a great celebration.”
