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Bracketology 2021: 10 key storylines for final 2 months of 2020-21 season

NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 8: The NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Committee meets on Wednesday afternoon, March 8, 2017 in New York City. The committee is gathered in New York to begin the five-day process of selecting and seeding the field of 68 teams for the NCAA MenÕs Basketball Tournament. The final bracket will be released on Sunday evening following the completion of conference tournaments. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, NY - MARCH 8: The NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Committee meets on Wednesday afternoon, March 8, 2017 in New York City. The committee is gathered in New York to begin the five-day process of selecting and seeding the field of 68 teams for the NCAA MenÕs Basketball Tournament. The final bracket will be released on Sunday evening following the completion of conference tournaments. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
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Bracketology (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Bracketology (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

There are many things that have changed in this 2020-21 NCAA Basketball season. Every day, teams have been going on “pause”, while games have been getting postponed or rescheduled. In one way or another, every single program has been affected. But nothing more than Bracketology, which has had analysts everywhere struggling to get a hold of where teams should be placed in hypothetical fields of 68.

The main issue has been evaluating teams with an unequal number of games. Some have played nearly 20 games already, while others have barely cracked 10. And that really affects the bubble conversation, with talented programs in that area mainly due to a lack of games. And when some of them take a “bad loss”, it’s an even bigger problem for teams to overcome.

As of now, conferences and programs are rescheduling games to the best of their ability. We saw that this week when the Villanova Wildcats got scheduled to take on the Georgetown Hoyas on Super Bowl Sunday instead of a potential mega matchup against the No. 1 Gonzaga Bulldogs. Speaking of the Bulldogs, they’re playing in a WCC Conference that currently has half the teams on “pause” forcing a reshuffling of a schedule that has them playing Pacific and BYU on the road.

Even though we have the “NET” rankings released, we still don’t have the first 16 seeds from the Selection Committee, which normally would’ve been released by now. So Bracketologists don’t have a template of who the top projected seeds are at the moment, making it a bit of a guessing game.

There are plenty of storylines to follow for the next month of regular-season games, as Selection Sunday is just a little more than a month away. Here are some specific storylines to watch going forward.

*NET rankings mentioned throughout are through February 4