NCAA Basketball: 10 mid-majors to watch for ahead of 2021 offseason

With the 2020-21 season over, NCAA Basketball will enter one of its most tumultuous offseason periods ever.  The option of an extra year of eligibility, paired with a rampant transfer portal that has reached at least 1,300 entries, has created a chaotic precursor to a 2021-22 campaign where anything goes – and that includes at the mid-major level.

While the common thought is that the transfer portal has been most harmful to low-major and mid-major institutions – and that is partly true – there have been programs that have thrived thus far in the offseason, through some combination of returning players, the transfer market, and incoming recruits.  Teams that were wildly successful last season appear primed to repeat that success next season, while others that were in the middle-of-the-pack will look to take a step up.

As usual, some mid-majors enjoyed success on the national level this past year.  A handful of teams – Liberty, St. Bonaventure, Southern Utah, Winthrop, and UC Santa Barbara, just to name a few – were among the winningest teams in the country in 2020-21.  Others, like Loyola-Chicago, Oral Roberts, North Texas, Abilene Christian, and Ohio, experienced rousing success in the NCAA Tournament.

Fast forward to this coming season, where a few of the usual suspects have put their stake in remaining among the upper echelons of the mid-major titans – but a changing of the guard is also taking place, largely due to the transfer portal.  Some teams will be out on a mission to prove themselves after a tumultuous, COVID-19-riddled season – while others will look to return to the forefront of college basketball for the first time in decades.

Obviously, much can still change in the coming weeks and months, and they will – but for now, there are 10 mid-majors who should be given attention in the early goings of the 2021 offseason, and have made stakes in catapulting themselves to the top ranks of mid-major basketball.