2021 NCAA Tournament West Region roundtable, key questions

The West Region of the NCAA Tournament could be nicknamed the “Gonzaga Bulldogs Region” due to two things. The first being that the Bulldogs are currently unbeaten after a dominant regular season, the first to do so since the Kentucky Wildcats in 2015.

That would normally be enough of a reason but the bracket itself became a storyline. Gonzaga is the No. 1 overall seed in the Big Dance but the No. 2, 3, and 4, seeds were all previous opponents for the Bulldogs in the regular season. Iowa has the likely National Player of the Year in Luka Garza and is one of the top-scoring teams in the nation.

More importantly, the Hawkeyes are currently healthy and aren’t dealing with covid issues. The same can’t be said for Kansas and Virginia, as they both will be missing players for at least the Round of 64 games. In fact, the Cavaliers haven’t even traveled to the bubble in Indianapolis yet due to contract tracing.

There are plenty of other talented teams in this region, including the Creighton Bluejays, Oregon Ducks, and USC Trojans, who have arguably the best big man in the country in Evan Mobley. This doesn’t even include talented mid-major programs such as Ohio, UC-Santa Barbara, and VCU.

For this roundtable, we’ll be asking five questions to some contributors to Busting Brackets concerning the West Region. Here are the writers that participated, along with the questions.

Trevor Sinodhinos – @sinodhinos

Bryan Mauro – @threecolorbeard

Joey Loose – @jloose128

Adam Bernstein – @AdamBernstein18