Fact or Fiction: NCAA tourney, Gonzaga, Duke, UNC
With the basketball season in full swing and recruiting news seeming to heat up, Rivals national recruiting analysts Rob Cassidy and Dan McDonald tackle three of college basketball’s hottest topics and debate whether each statement is true or false.
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2021 Rankings: Rivals150 | Team | Position
2022 Rankings: Rivals150 | Team | Position
2023 Rankings: Top 30
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1. The NCAA Tournament will go off uninterrupted.
McDonald's take: FACT. I'm going to take the optimistic approach here and say we get through the NCAA Tournament pretty smoothly by current standards. By March 22, we'll be down to 16 teams that will be in pretty locked down living conditions. By March 28, we'll only have four teams left. I choose to believe we'll be in much better shape two months from now with the spread of the virus and we'll all get to enjoy a very entertaining March Madness.
Cassidy's take: FICTION. I’ll play the percentages here and say we’ll have a small hiccup at best. Nothing anyone has seen this season inspires confidence that a three-week, multi-team tournament is going to be pulled off without at least one team being forced to pause basketball activities
I think they’ll crown a champion simply because there is too much money at stake not to, but to assume things will magically change because the games mean more is a bit naive. Of course a vaccine distribution breakthrough would change things, but an uninterrupted tournament becomes less likely if teams are required to travel to conference tournaments the week before.
I want this event to go off without a hitch. I’d love nothing more, but I’d also like free pizza for life and I’m not getting that either.
2. Five-stars Chet Holmgren and Hunter Sallis will both choose Gonzaga.
McDonald's take: FACT. Chet Holmgren has been trending towards Gonzaga for a while now. It's hard to see any of the other schools beating it out, especially with how well it is playing this season. Hunter Sallis seems a little more open, but I'd still lean towards Gonzaga winning out in that recruiting battle as well, giving them one of the top recruiting classes in the country and a perfect replacement for Jalen Suggs.
Cassidy's take: FACT. A month ago I’d have said fiction to this, as it seemed Sallis was headed to Kentucky. Then, Kentucky did ... well, whatever its doing this season and things have changed. Just how much the situations are correlated is impossible to know but, whatever the case, Sallis now looks headed to Spokane.
Holmgren has long seemed destined to play for Mark Few, and nothing on that front has changed. It all adds up to an incredibly strong close to the 2021 class for a program that seems to be becoming stronger by the year.
3. Duke and North Carolina will miss the NCAA Tournament.
McDonald's take: FICTION. It's still very strange to think either of these teams are in real danger of missing the NCAA Tournament, but nothing has been normal for the last year now anyways. However, I still think both of these teams will make the Big Dance. North Carolina has won four out of five now, which puts them at 5-4 in the ACC. They seem to be righting the ship. We have a smaller sample size to go off with Duke (5-5, 3-3 ACC), but despite losing two in a row, I still think they'll be there in March as well. They have too much talent and the ACC isn't as daunting as it has been in recent years.
Cassidy's take: FICTION. North Carolina is going to make it. I feel confident saying that with my chest.
The Tar Heels seem to be improving by the game, so the trajectory is encouraging. The sample size on Duke is much smaller because of the sheer number of games played, so I’m not nearly as confident in the Blue Devils ability to turn things around and land in the tournament.
Duke may well be fine and play on the event’s second weekend. That scenario shouldn’t be ruled out. Things could go the other way just as easily, though. The fact that Mike Krzyzewski’s team is hovering around 30 in the Pomeroy Ratings suggests that they’re a tournament caliber team, but the relatively small sample size should be noted.