Joe Lunardi s 2021 NCAA tournament bracket winners and losers
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Lunardi s only gripe with the NCAA tournament seeding (0:41)
Joe Lunardi explains he is mostly pleased with the committee s selection of the NCAA tournament, but sees Oklahoma State better than a 4-seed. (0:41) Contributor to SportsCenter, ESPN Insider Published first public bracket in 1995
Winners and losers from Selection Sunday as college basketball readies for the 2021 NCAA tournament, according to Joey Brackets:
WINNERS: 68 teams, approximately 1,000 college basketball players and millions of March Madness fans around the world. My co-author David Smale calls Selection Sunday the biggest non-sporting sporting event in America. He s not wrong.
Big Ten sends nine teams to the Big Dance March 15, 2021 12:23am Text size Copy shortlink:
No. 1 seed, Midwest Region
Path to a title: The Illini should overwhelm their first two opponents but could face potential No. 1 draft pick Cade Cunningham and Oklahoma State in the Sweet 16. Houston, that region s No. 2 seed, is a statistical darling.
Coach: Brad Underwood is making his fifth NCAA tournament appearance after leading Stephen F. Austin there three times and Oklahoma State once.
Player to watch: Point guard Ayo Dosunmu is simply electrifying with the things he does at high speed, and it s tough to stop the offense with another first-team All-Big Ten selection in 7-foot center Kofi Cockburn.
kinds of upsets the tournament produces leads a lot of bracket pickers astray.
Most tournaments have a small number of big surprises and a heaping handful of middling “upsets” that aren’t that hard to call out ahead of time. But these more boring non-upset “upsets” are where real value lies in a bracket pool, because, again, there are a lot of them. If you pick a No. 15 seed to beat a No. 2 seed and you’re right, then great! But that won’t usually happen, and even if you
do land such a whale, you won’t win your pool unless you get a lot more games right.
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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.