NCAA Basketball: Ranking all 67 NCAA Tournament games for 2020-21 season

There was nothing unusual about April 8th, 2019.  Minneapolis was hosting the National NCAA Tournament Championship game, a battle between the three-seeded Texas Tech Red Raiders and the top-seeded Virginia Cavaliers.  In a back-and-forth affair between two teams making their first-ever appearances in the title game, the Cavaliers eked out an 85-77 win in overtime, completing the greatest turnaround campaign after the loss to 16-seed UMBC in the tournament a year before.

It would take 710 days for the next NCAA Tournament game.  In that span, the world was riddled by a global pandemic – one that put sports everywhere on hold, including March Madness in 2020.  Putting on a season in 2020-21 seemed like a far-off thought, only furthered in the wake of the Ivy League’s announcement that none of its schools would be participating in athletics, let alone basketball.

But it happened – and, all things considered, it went without too many problems.  There were positive cases, there were cancellations, and there were teams who were forced to miss or drop out of conference tournaments due to COVID-19 – but the season was an overwhelming success, otherwise.

Look no further than the 2021 NCAA Tournament, held completely in the state of Indiana with few incidents – with the exception of one team being forced to drop out.  Tipping off on March 18th, few tournaments were as chaotic as this one.  Neither Duke nor Kentucky qualified for the first time since 1976, while two other teams – Hartford and Grand Canyon – made the field for the first time ever.  The sum total of the seeds of the teams in the Sweet Sixteen was the highest since the tournament expanded in 1985, checking in at 94.

That is all without mentioning that this tournament featured, arguably, two of the greatest teams of all time in Gonzaga and Baylor – both of whom predictably made the championship game in an unpredictable tournament.  In addition to those two, the Final Four was rounded out by a Houston program that had not reached the Final Four since 1984 – and an uncharacteristic Cinderella in UCLA.

Several weeks and 66 NCAA Tournament games later, the 2020-21 season has finally come to a close, after a shocking but disappointing championship tilt.  With the tumultuous campaign behind us, it is time to take a step back and reflect on the chaos that was March Madness in 2021 – and see where each game ultimately ranked.