2021 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament
American collegiate basketball competition
The 2021 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament was a single-elimination tournament of 68 teams to determine the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I men's college basketball national champion for the 2020–21 season. The 82nd edition of the tournament began play on March 18, 2021, in sites around the state of Indiana, and concluded with the championship game at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis on April 5, with the Baylor Bears defeating the previously undefeated Gonzaga Bulldogs 86–70 to earn the team's first ever title.
For logistical considerations surrounding the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (which resulted in the cancellation of the previous year's tournament), the NCAA announced in January 2021 that all tournament games would be held in Indiana rather than at sites across the country. This was the only time in the history of the tournament to date that a single state has hosted it in its entirety.
This marked the first time since 1976 that neither Duke or Kentucky qualified for the tournament. It was also the first time since 1995 that Duke failed to make the tournament, breaking a streak of 24 consecutive appearances. America East champion Hartford and WAC champion Grand Canyon made their NCAA Tournament debuts.
The tournament was marked by many upsets, with Yahoo Sports journalist Pete Thamel calling it "one of the most dizzying NCAA men's tournaments in history". With only half of the 16 second-round games having been played, there had been 11 upsets to that point, using the NCAA's definition of "upset" as a win by a team seeded five or more lines below its defeated opponent. This had already broken the record for most upsets prior to the round of 16; by the end of the second round, this number went up to 12.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q65090415. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021, 2020, 1976 and 1995.
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