When it comes to the South Region of the 2021 NCAA Tournament, the No. 1 seed Baylor Bears are the face of this part of the bracket, but there are plenty of other quality teams as well. That includes the No. 2 seed Ohio State Buckeyes, who arguably is the 5th-best overall team in the entire field of 68. The Bears drew the short straw with this one because Ohio State couldn’t be placed in the same region as Michigan and Illinois, and Gonzaga gets the benefit of being the No. 1 overall seed.
The other top seeds include the Arkansas Razorbacks at No. 3, along with Purdue at 4. Villanova is No. 5 in this region, although many have them on upset alert in the first round against Winthrop due to their injury situation with point guard Collin Gillespie.
But Baylor could have their hands full in the Round of 32 game against either North Carolina and Wisconsin. Both teams were ranked in the preseason top-15 and has plenty of talent, although consistency has been an issue for both units.
There are plenty of intriguing storylines for the South Region, even beyond what Baylor does. That includes some potentially dangerous double-digit seeds in Virginia Tech, Utah State, North Texas, and Winthrop.
For this roundtable, we asked questions to some contributors for Busting Brackets about this section of the NCAA Tournament and what to expect as the games soon get underway. Here are the participants.
Benjamin Zacher – @beezacher
Elliott Geller – @ellgell
Andrew Tineo – @D_Tineo4
Chris Thedinga – @CThedinga
Jacob Zinkula – @1PerfectBraket