Hofstra won the CAA Tournament in 2020, but were denied the opportunity to play in the Big Dance.
Bracketology. Here we are for another ride. Year #10 for me publically breaking down teams, resumes and working for those elusive answers from Selection Committee members. The pleasure of reviewing endless scenarios within the infrastructure of entirely unbalanced College Basketball scheduling began many months ago. The unpredictability of 2021 adds a new an important wrinkle to the Bracketology world: what changes will the committee be forced to make? How important is non-conference play now, when some programs won’t get the opportunity? In due time, we will know these answers and much more. Be sure to follow Bracketeer.org for continuous coverage all season and beyond.
We begin the 2020-21 campaign by looking at the projected one-bid leagues. One-Bid leagues are quite possibly my favorite and most frustrating part of doing Bracket work. I believe these leagues are not only intriguing to follow but in many cases overlooked by the committee when it comes to seeding. It is hard to imagine many or any debates between teams like Colgate, Gardner-Webb, and Bradley getting a 14 or a 15 seed in the committee room for example, but that is actually a pretty big deal for those leagues and the schools itself (it also can ding guys like me in Bracket Matrix scoring). The scales have been also tipped in more recent seasons for these leagues to not be able to schedule many or any opportunities for quality wins and it is increasingly more and more difficult to send more than one team to the dance from these 21 conferences specifically. Last season we saw only East Tennessee State inside the bubble on our final Bracketology Big Board, but the Buccaneers won the Auto bid regardless. Two-bid opportunities for the SoCon, CUSA and OVC could be in play in this abbreviated season. Bracketeer has moved the Missouri Valley Conference to the Multi-Bid category this season as we expect Northern Iowa or Loyola-Chicago to secure an At-Large this year. We can only hope to find another league in this position by the end of 2020-21. But it is traditionally difficult to predict where they will come from.
Many of my peer bracketologists will look at these leagues very quickly, and assume “okay this team is picked first” or “this team is currently in first” and just plug them into the bracket accordingly. We will not do that here, we envision which teams are setup well to win the Regular Season Championship, and separately look at which teams are setup to succeed in their specific conference tournament setting. Admittedly, once we get into conference play mid-season, I do change my projected auto-bid winner to reflect who has the inside track to the Conference Tournament #1 seed. It also works as an agent to recognize more programs throughout the season instead of just plugging in the same team every new bracket post. We love recognizing programs here!
For preseason purposes however, I believe it is more effective and thoughtful to predict both outcomes: The Regular Season Conference Champion and the Conference Tournament Champion. Not all tournaments are created equal, FAR from it. Some are on campus, some are in neutral locations and the bracket format varies tremendously from league to league. For these reasons, I have two sets of predictions and the Auto Bid winners will be applied to my upcoming Preseason Bracket. For extra fun, I’ve also added a Darkhorse team to track this year and Player of the Year and Newcomer of the Year picks for each conference.
One-Bid League Predictions:
