The 2020-21 NCAA Basketball season has come with several surprises – with several mid-major programs making their name known early on.
This unique NCAA Basketball season, just over two weeks into the season has already seen it all: game cancellations, top-ranked teams fall, surprises and disappointments, coaching controversies, power conference schools lose to non-Div. I competition, and so much more.
But it has also provided sleeper teams – those in high-major conferences that have impressed, like Missouri and Clemson – but also in mid-major conferences, where those teams do not necessarily receive that level of attention.
There are definitely mid-major teams who have made noise already this season. The Atlantic 10, per usual, has churned out two NCAA Tournament caliber teams in Richmond and Saint Louis – with potentially more. San Diego State looks like a team that could go undefeated again. Loyola-Chicago and Furman have looked solid to begin their seasons.
But there are still those who fly under the radar and do not earn national recognition until they usurp a nationally-ranked program – or, for some until they potentially reach the NCAA Tournament. Those are the mid-major teams that usually do not finish first in their respective conferences – the 2017-18 UMBC Retrievers and 2012-13 Florida Gulf Coast Eagles of the world.
For context – at least a quarter of KenPom’s top 100, currently, is comprised of mid-major programs. A decent chunk of those – eight, to be exact – are A-10 schools. Five, including Gonzaga, hail from the WCC. A few other conferences feature multiple inclusions, like Conference USA, Mountain West, and Missouri Valley – but only one of the teams included in this listing is in the top 100.
The combined record of these five mid-major squads, as of Dec. 11, is 18-2 – a pretty solid mark in general, but a handful of those wins have been over teams that rank in the upper-half of KenPom – and the two losses are nothing to scoff at, considering they came against Texas Tech and Texas Southern.
These are all teams that hail from – more likely than not – one-bid leagues, meaning they have the extremely difficult task of upending the teams ahead of them come March (if we reach that point, at least). For now, these are five mid-major programs that are being overlooked – and should be remembered come conference tournament time.