NCAA Tournament 2021: Gonzaga, Iowa, and Kansas headline West Region

After a little delay to the Selection Show thanks to Ohio State and Illinois going into overtime in the Big Ten Tournament finals, we got to see where the 68 participating programs will be placed for the Big Dance. The first section that was brought up was the West Region, which wasn’t a surprise since it was home to the clear-cut No. 1 overall seed.

After going 26-0 and winning the WCC regular-season and conference tournament titles, the Gonzaga Bulldogs leads the West Region at the very top. They’ll take on the winner of Norfolk State and Appalachian State.

They have some familiar names alongside them in the bracket, with Virginia, Kansas, and Iowa rounding out the other top-4 seeds in this section. The Bulldogs defeated all three of them in the regular season by double-digits but who knows what could happen in a potential rematch.

Speaking of “who knows”, that’s the current case of both Virginia and Kansas. Both programs had to leave their respective conference tournaments last week due to having positive cases for covid. The good news is that the teams have not opted out of the Big Dance as of yet and still plans to arrive in Indianapolis at some point this week. Of course, things could change and there remains a possibility that they could be forced to forget, allowing Louisville or Colorado State to replace them.

The West Region has plenty of storylines and potential, including the path to an unbeaten season for the first time since 1976. Here’s an overview of the West Region in this year’s NCAA Tournament.