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Gonzaga guard Jalen SuggsYoung Kwak/Associated Press
The 2021 men s NCAA tournament bracket is set, and one program will soon be cutting down the nets at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis as the national champion.
If you re an optimistic person, the beauty of March Madness is a near-equal opportunity for the 68-team field. Although eight programs have a play-in game, a title is otherwise six wins away.
But the realistic chances for every team can vary dramatically. For example, no reasonable person will argue Gonzaga and Baylor are equally as likely as Cleveland State, Oral Roberts and Hartford to win the 2021 national championship. The NCAA tournament has extreme long shots, clear favorites and everything in between.
9:57 p.m. THURSDAY vs. #11 UCLA, TBS (FIRST FOUR) It’s not out of the question that any one of those teams could make a run. KenPom rates six of them as top-13 teams nationally – Michigan (2nd), Illinois (3rd), Iowa (5th), Ohio State (7th), Wisconsin (10th) and Purdue (13th) – while Maryland is rated 31st and Rutgers 34th. Michigan State is rated 56th, but the Spartans showed they could still be dangerous during the final two weeks of the regular season, in which they beat Illinois, Ohio State and Michigan. The only Big Ten teams that didn’t make this year’s tournament are the five conference teams that finished the season with losing records: Indiana, Penn State, Northwestern, Minnesota and Nebraska.