The 2021 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament will be without some of the elite schools of college basketball.
Duke, Kentucky and Louisville are some of the best schools that did not make the tournament after disappointing 2020-21 seasons.
The Blue Devils had to win or at least win the ACC Tournament Championship. The team drove high after beating Boston College and Louisville, but did not get far after a positive coronavirus test within the team forced them to bend outside the national season.
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Duke finished the season 13-11 and 9-9 in the ACC.
The NCAA selection committee determined that the team did not do enough to secure a spot in the field of 68. Neither Kentucky nor Louisville.
Kentucky has the season as no. 10 started in the Associated Press Top 25, but finished 9-16 and 8-9 in the SEC overall. This is the first time the Wildcats have not made the tournament since 2013, and the first time the school has completed the season with a losing record since the 1988-89 season.
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“My teams have historically played as if they were losing, they are going to the electric chair,” Calipari said at the end of the season via Kentucky Sports Radio. “This team did not. [At] Times we did. But maybe we were not physically capable of it. But you know what, here’s what I would say. For them to play how they started that game, and then to play the second half as they played, they say something. They never stop with something. They have not stopped once this year. ‘
Louisville lost in the ACC tournament with Duke, and missed the NCAA tournament.
Chris Mack’s group finished 13-7 with an 8-5 record in the ACC. The Cardinals may have managed not to achieve the troubled victories of the conferences in the Big East and Pac-12.
Mitch Barnhart, chairman of the men’s basketball committee, said during the selection program that the school’s COVID-19 breaks do not help either.
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“It was definitely an interruption in the conversation,” he said via WDRB-TV. “What we noticed was that they were deeply considered in discussions we had. The challenge was that you had two teams that made really remarkable tournament runs in Georgetown and Oregon State … and because they took the places. had to drop some people Unfortunately, during the year you have an opportunity to get your resume where you want it, and at the end of the day, if it is not where you want it, you have the chance to go to the tournament and secure the (automatic qualifying match). Two teams did it, and in the process of doing so, they took away two bids. ‘
Each team also decided to renounce the NIT.