With the release of the preseason AP and Coaches’ polls (along with Matt Norlander’s exhaustive rankings of all D-1 basketball teams), we can now unveil the preseason media bracket for this upcoming season:
As you may have noticed this year, the entirety of the NCAA Tournament for 2021 will be scheduled within the city of Indianapolis (with expected venues including Lucas Oil Stadium, Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Hinkle Fieldhouse, the Indiana Farmers Coliseum and potential venues within 50 miles). Due to the coronavirus pandemic, another change in the bracket this year is that there will be 31 automatic qualifiers since the Ivy League will not participate in the tournament. There are 37 at-large teams listed above.
This also meant that every team that got at least one vote in either poll was able to be included in the field (via both at-large and automatic qualification). Saint Mary’s and Georgia Tech were the last two teams in the field; they would ordinarily have been left out had the Ivy League winner been included and had Auburn not self-imposed a postseason ban for this season. This also resulted in more of a true S-Curve since the need for true geographical regions and subregions is not there this year. BYU would still be placed in a Thursday-Saturday grouping.