Busting Brackets
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NCAA Basketball: 5 major problems with a conference-only 2020-21 season

By Caleb Hightower

PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARCH 22: A view of the NCAA logo during a game between the Albany Great Danes and the Duke Blue Devils during the second round of the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at the Wells Fargo Center on March 22, 2013 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA, PA - MARCH 22: A view of the NCAA logo during a game between the Albany Great Danes and the Duke Blue Devils during the second round of the 2013 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at the Wells Fargo Center on March 22, 2013 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Lance King/Getty Images) /
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NCAA Tournament
MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA – APRIL 08: The Virginia Cavaliers celebrate their teams 85-77 win over the Texas Tech Red Raiders (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images) /

The 2021 NCAA Tournament

Problem #4: The committee may not format the NCAA Tournament correctly, and may also completely botch the seeding

To make myself perfectly clear, I am not necessarily opposed to the NCAA tournament being held in March, but my two questions are:

  1. Will the committee be able to format the tournament correctly?
  2. Will the committee be able to make sure the tournament seeding is as good as it could be?

Think about it like this, there are 32 Division 1 basketball conferences, and each of them is guaranteed to get at least one team into the NCAA Tournament each season (which could change if multiple conferences and schools announce that they won’t be playing basketball at all this season). And under normal circumstances, 68 teams make the NCAA Tournament, so if the NCAA is all in on the idea of a shortened season, they will be putting more pressure on the committee to quickly figure out if they want to try to make the traditional NCAA Tournament format work, or attempt to shake things up by expanding the number of teams. Additionally, they will have to make sure that they effectively match teams up against each other.

For the sake of this argument, I’ll assume that the committee will keep the same format as in years past. The issue with keeping the same format is that the committee will take a lot of heat from fans, players, and coaches for catering to the power 5 teams more than they ought to. I’m aware that this happens whether the season is 16-20 games, or 30+ games long, but this time the committee won’t be able to make any excuses that’ll be worth listening to.

Selecting two or three Big Ten teams that only started to pick up their play as the regular season was coming to a close, over two or three mid-major teams that overachieved in non-conference play, but underachieved in conference play, may have been justified somehow in the past, but in a conference-only season, the committee might make it obvious that they’re playing favorites.

If they don’t do this already, the committee probably wouldn’t take the time to extensively review the resumes of teams that are being overlooked this season(because they wouldn’t have the ability to look at their big-time non-conference wins), and would only pay attention to the teams they felt like could perform at the highest level, on the biggest stage. And even mid-majors that were given a chance to prove that the committee didn’t make an unforgivable mistake, by allowing them to compete in the NCAA Tournament, they, in all likelihood, would not receive favorable seeds (compared to power 5 teams).

Now, you could make the case that some teams should just be content with being in the NCAA tournament, but every team, that is deserving, should receive the seed that helps validate the hard work and perseverance they possessed throughout the regular season, and beginning of the postseason. You could also try to make the case that the committee will not be to blame for this, because they are just doing what they’ve always been comfortable with, but it wouldn’t make sense for them to do this to teams, who would have even more of an unfair disadvantage this season than they’ve had in previous ones. In short, I am saying that the committee looks past, and under/over seeds teams all the time, but in this case, they would be doing it as a result of laziness, and unpreparedness, and not because of their misjudgment of specific teams.

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