A look at the top preseason NCAA Basketball teams for the 2020-21 season.
After what was arguably the longest offseason for fans, NCAA Basketball’s on-court action is back. The new start date for the season is November 25th and while programs are scrambling to create new non-conference schedules, we’re just a month away from tip-off.
While there haven’t been games in the past several months, there have been plenty of notable storylines in the sport. Between coaching changes, transfers, recruiting, and late NBA Draft decisions, a number of teams were affected both negatively and positively.
Which brings us to rankings and predictions. At this point, everyone affiliated with NCAA Basketball is coming up with preseason predictions and expectations for all 357 D-I programs. That includes collective rankings for respective conferences and combined overall.
Here at Busting Brackets, we have a tremendous staff of informative and opinionated writers. So rather than have just one person come up with their own list for the site, 22 of us came together to create our own collective poll. Everyone individually provided their own top-25 and the results were added up to create the site’s official preseason ranking for the 2020-21 season.
Besides myself (Tristan Freeman), 22 other writers contributed not only to the rankings but many also added their own words to the project, taking a respective team and discussing why they’re for real this season. Their names and Twitter handles are at the bottom of the pages. Here were the others who participated with their rankings;
Stu Luddecke (@SLuddecke93)
Dave Ackert (@AckAttackk)
Marcus Washington (@MTCwithMook)
Nathan Dillon (@UK_CatFacts)
Trevor Sinodhinos (@sinodhinos)
Matthew Mastandrea (@mmastandrea20)
In total, 45 different teams received at least one top-25 vote from the 23 participants. Of those, only three teams got at least one vote for the No. 1 spot. For those who have been paying attention to the offseason discussion, it’s not a big surprise as to who they are.
There certainly was discussion as to who should be at the top, along with which teams made up the rest of the top-25. With so many voices, it was fun to see how it all adds up. Including the group of teams who barely missed out, check out Busting Brackets preseason rankings for the 2020-21 season.