What will the 2021 men’s NCAA tournament look like?

The NCAA Tournament is moving ahead after missing 2020 due to the Covid pandemic. The situation in the U.S. is improving as vaccination rollout accelerates, but we are far from out of the woods yet. As a result, there are numerous changes the NCAA is making for this year in order for the tournament to happen.

There is still considerable concern an outbreak could occur, but the NCAA is hoping to limit that possibility by playing every game in Indiana under ‘bubble’ conditions. Teams won’t be leaving the Indianapolis area once they arrive until their tournament run is over. As a result multiple games will be happening at once, across numerous sites around the state.

Here are the arenas where NCAA tournament games will be

In addition to this plan, the NCAA has a protocol in place should a team have an outbreak, or choose to not participate in the tournament due to concerns. The tournament has built in a 48-hour window to name replacement teams if a program can’t meet medical protocol. The committee’s main goal with replacement teams will be making sure every conference still gets one bid. If a team from a multi-bid league can’t pass protocol, the tournament will select a team from the first four out.

After that 48 hour window passes, the bracket will be finalized and replacement teams won’t be named. If there are positive tests within a team’s traveling party after that, programs will essentially have to forfeit. This is what happened to Duke, Kansas, Virginia and others in their conference tournaments.

In terms of the protocols in place for individual teams, they will be pretty tight. According to USA Today there will need to be numerous negative tests prior to any team taking the court.

Teams are being required to produce seven consecutive days of negative test results in order to play in Indianapolis and San Antonio, where the men’s and women’s events are being played, respectively. The requirement includes every member of a school’s allotted 34-person travel party. Teams can elect to travel with a significantly smaller group should some members of the party be ruled out by positive tests or contact tracing. Those held back would be required to meet necessary protocols to allow for travel at a later date.

At this time the NCAA has not outlined its plan should an outbreak happen during the tournament, though there are undoubtably plans in place, even if they aren’t public at this time.

In terms of the schedule of the tournament, the first two rounds will now take place from Friday-Monday as opposed to the traditional Thursday-Sunday slate. Other than that, things will look fairly standard to what we’ve seen in the past.

For all intents and purposes the tournament will continue as we’re accustomed, but with some tweaks — however at this point the best we can hope is that it will be as uneventful as possible off the court, and that student-athletes are able to compete safely.