Every year there are NCAA Basketball teams that make an NCAA Tournament appearance after a long drought. Here are four that could end their skids in 2019.
Success for most NCAA Basketball teams can be cyclical, they go through rebuildings, retoolings, and resurgences. Every season you have the biggest portion of NCAA Tournament bids taken up by those programs that have cemented themselves as perennial tournament programs barring the biggest of aberrations. There are also a handful of teams each year that return to the Big Dance after an extended rebuild or retool.
Identifying those teams during the off-season can be more difficult but there are key factors that can help you pick out some likely candidates. It could be a team that has an unusually good recruiting class, a team that has key players returning allowing them to build off of previous seasons, or a team that has been slowly building and now has a veteran squad that is ready to make the jump. Whatever the reason, those teams always exist and this season will be no different.
So, who is this season’s teams that are most likely to end their droughts and get an invite to March Madness? I have identified four teams that I think will return to the NCAA Tournament after a minimum of a four-year absence. As you will see, these four teams cover the landscape of the hierarchy of college basketball, from power-five schools to a mid-major team that should be banging on the door after an extended drought.
Without further ado, here are four teams should see their names on selection Sunday in March 2020 for the first time in a long time.