Conference: Big 12. Bid: At-Large. Region: South. Seed: No. 1. Tournament History: 14-12, 2 Final Fours in 12 appearances. Last appearance: 2019, lost to Gonzaga in the Second Round. Season Stats Top Scorers: Jared Butler 17.1; MaCio Teague 16.2; Davion Mitchell 14.1. Rebounds: Mark Vital 6.8; Jonathan Tchamwa Tchatchoua 5.3; Avg team margin (plus-4.4). Assist/Turnover Ratio (1.37): Mitchell (5.4/2.6), 130 assists. Last 10 Games: 8-2. Worst Loss: 74-83 vs. Oklahoma St. on Mar. 12. The Skinny: Second-ranked Baylor won its first regular-season league championship since 1950, but the Bears have never won a conference tournament title. Theyll remain 0-3 in the Big 12 title game after losing in the semifinals to Oklahoma State and star freshman Cade Cunningham. Baylor has been through a tough late-season stretch after its COVID-19 pause as it tried to squeeze in as many makeup games as possible. The Cowboys were their sixth ranked opponent in the last six games.
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The bracket for the 2021 men s NCAA tournament is finally here.
As always, many fans feel their team was royally screwed by the selection committee.
Some of those controversial decisions involve the bubble, where there will be a whole lot of How did
that team get in while
this team was left out? for the next few days.
In other cases, teams got in, but perhaps on a seed line or two worse than expected.
And then there are the teams that simply got screwed with bad matchups.
One difference from previous years is you won t find any entrants on this list who got screwed in regard to location. Usually a few teams are placed at a major geographical disadvantage, but that isn t the case this year with the entire tournament to be held in Indiana.
There are levels to this game.
During March Madness, the definitions of sleeper and deep run can vary pretty widely by program and season, and that goes double for this haywire 2020-21 men s campaign.
So when we sat down to find the teams we think could sneak up on the field and surpass expectations, we took an all-of-the-above approach. How could we do anything differently? Given the way this season has unfolded, everyone deserves to be graded on a curve of their own.
From would-be Cinderellas to high majors looking to reach the last game of the season, these programs appear to have the ingredients necessary to surprise onlookers and opponents. And we ve gone beyond the brand names to find programs that may be hiding in the shadows now but could swoop in and shred your bracket to confetti. Don t say you weren t warned.