The 2020 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Champion Tierlist

Congratulations to all 172 national champions!

It’s weird that nobody claims a national title for 2020, right?

Claiming national championships is a time-honored tradition in major college athletics. It was basically a necessity for most of college football history, and it still happens now, even in the playoff era. It’s not quite as common in men’s basketball, a sport that’s had a reasonably inclusive championship system since the late 1930s, but thanks to the Helms Foundation—which was just one guy, by the way—we have pre-tournament title claims dating back all the way to 1901.

Given this history, along with the fact that college basketball is the only major sport in the United States that didn’t get to crown a 2020 champion, I thought someone would have tried to fill the gap by now, but no one’s stepped to the plate.

Florida State has come the closest. On March 12, 2020, immediately before the quarterfinals of the ACC Tournament, conference administration announced that the remainder of the tournament would be cancelled and that Florida State (the regular season champion and thus the #1 seed in the conference tournament) would be awarded the ACC’s NCAA Tournament autobid. This was ultimately meaningless, of course; the NCAA cancelled their own tournament later that day.

Two days later, the Florida Senate voted 37-2 to declare Florida State national champions. Florida State never claimed this title themselves but they did infamously hang a banner in January 2022. You’ve probably seen it.

This is obviously ridiculous but it’s still not as ridiculous as the fact that nobody has tried to earnestly declare themselves champions.

Unlike college football, college basketball’s postseason is a crapshoot. It’s impossible to predict with any level of confidence which apparent juggernauts will roll into the Final Four and which will slip up in the first weekend. One of the very best teams usually ends up winning the whole thing, but it’s not entirely unreasonable to assert that anyone in the field has a nonzero chance of pulling it off. If you disagree with this assessment, remember that the 68th and lowest seed in the field—a team that was only on the bracket because of a ridiculous NCAA bylaw—defeated a 1-seed last year, and that a 15-seed reached the Sweet Sixteen last year and the Elite Eight in 2022.

If we stand by that logic—and I do—we can conclude that a somewhat defensible national title claim belongs to every team that hadn’t yet been eliminated from NCAA Tournament contention when it was cancelled.

I like chaos (as you can probably guess), so I think every team that meets this description should claim the title. You might think that’s absurd, but I still think it’s less absurd than having no one at all claim the title.

So let’s find and recognize our 2020 national champions.

Methodology

For me to conclude that you were still in contention for the NCAA Tournament title when the season was cancelled on March 12, you need to have met at least one of two criteria:

1. You had either already won your conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament or were still competing to win it when the season was cancelled. Essentially, this means that you qualified for your conference tournament and had not yet lost by March 12.

2. You were listed as an at-large on the final 2020 Bracket Matrix. Ideally, you would be listed in the consensus field of 68 itself, but in the spirit of ludicrous generosity, I’ll give it to you if you were included on at least one of the 97 brackets in the matrix.

As long as you meet one of these two criteria, all claims are valid. But some are more valid than others, so—as the title of this piece suggests—I’ll tierlist the claims from least to most justifiable.

For normalcy’s sake, if a conference (like the ACC) awarded its autobid without having completed its tournament, I’ll ignore it and act as if the season would have continued on as usual.

Without further ado…

The Tierlist

Let’s start with the teams that were ineligible to compete for the championship in the first place.

Ineligible to Be Champions

To give the little guys more love, I’ll list all teams by conference and sort the conferences by their KenPom rank ascending.

Six teams were ineligible for the 2020 postseason before the regular season even began.

• SWAC: Florida A&M

• NEC: Merrimack

• ASUN: North Alabama

• WAC: California Baptist

• Horizon: Detroit Mercy

• ACC: Georgia Tech

California Baptist, Merrimack, and North Alabama were ineligible on account of still being in the midst of their transition to Division I. This is the same “ridiculous bylaw” I mentioned earlier—the one that allowed an undeserving Fairleigh Dickinson into the 2023 NCAA Tournament despite losing the NEC Tournament final to…coincidentally, Merrimack.

Detroit Mercy was ineligible because their Academic Progress Rate (APR) score was too low. APR is a system the NCAA devised in 2003 to help ensure its players were upholding the “student” half of the “student-athlete” bargain. People are probably most familiar with it as the metric that determines which 5-7 football teams get to play in a bowl game if there aren’t enough eligible teams to fill every berth, but it can also prevent you from playing in the postseason entirely. If your four-year APR is low enough to suggest that less than half your team is on track to graduate, you’re banned until you fix it.

Florida A&M self-imposed a postseason ban that season due to what they claimed were “administrative issues” that allowed several ineligible players to compete for them between 2010 and 2017.

Finally, the NCAA banned Georgia Tech from that postseason for recruiting violations. Georgia Tech spent the entire season appealing the decision, but the appeal process was not completed by the time the ACC Tournament was set to begin, so they dropped the appeal and served the ban. It worked out for them in the end: they were not in at-large contention, so they would have needed to win the ACC Tournament, but that was of course cancelled, as was the postseason they were banned from. The NCAA counted the ban as having been served despite the postseason itself being wiped from existence.

As with several of the above teams, none of the teams in the next tier played in their conference tournament at all.

Did Not Qualify to Be Champions

Not every conference invites all of their teams to the conference tournament. 25 teams played in one of these conferences and failed to qualify for the chance to earn an autobid.

• SWAC: Arkansas–Pine Bluff, Mississippi Valley State

• OVC: SIU Edwardsville, Southeast Missouri, Tennessee Tech, UT Martin

• Southland: Central Arkansas, Houston Baptist, New Orleans, Southeastern Louisiana, UIW

• NEC: Central Connecticut, Wagner

• ASUN: Kennesaw State

• America East: Binghamton

• Big West: Cal Poly

• Summit: Western Illinois

• Ivy: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth

• Sun Belt: Troy, ULM

• C-USA: Middle Tennessee, Southern Miss

At the risk of being redundant, but for the sake of completion, I’ll also note that none of these teams had any chance of an at-large bid. The closest, inasmuch as two zeroes can exist at separate distances, was Dartmouth, who finished the season ranked #205 on KenPom.

One more tier of non-champions before we get to the good stuff. Unfortunately, it’s the largest tier in the entire list. Here’s every team that had a shot and blew it.

Not Champions

151 teams qualified for their conference tournament but lost in said tournament before March 12 and were not listed on a single bracket in the Bracket Matrix.

• MEAC: Delaware State, Howard, Maryland Eastern Shore, SC State

• SWAC: Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Alcorn State, Grambling

• Big South: Campbell, Charleston Southern, Gardner-Webb, Hampton, High Point, Longwood, Presbyterian, Radford, UNC Asheville, USC Upstate

• OVC: Austin Peay, Eastern Illinois, Eastern Kentucky, Jacksonville State, Morehead State, Murray State, Tennessee State

• Southland: McNeese, Texas A&M–Corpus Christi

• NEC: Bryant, Fairleigh Dickinson, LIU, Mount St. Mary’s, Sacred Heart, Saint Francis (PA), St. Francis Brooklyn

• ASUN: Florida Gulf Coast, Jacksonville, Lipscomb, NJIT, North Florida, Stetson

• America East: Albany, Maine, New Hampshire, UMass Lowell, UMBC, Stony Brook

• Patriot: American, Army, Bucknell, Colgate, Holy Cross, Lafayette, Lehigh, Loyola (MD), Navy

• Horizon: Cleveland State, Green Bay, IUPUI, Milwaukee, Oakland, UIC, Wright State, Youngstown State

• MAAC: Canisius, Fairfield, Iona, Manhattan, Marist

• Summit: Denver, North Dakota, Omaha, Oral Roberts, Purdue Fort Wayne, South Dakota, South Dakota State

• CAA: Charleston, Delaware, Drexel, Elon, James Madison, Northeastern, Towson, UNC Wilmington, William & Mary

• Big Sky: Idaho, Northern Arizona, Weber State

• SoCon: Chattanooga, Furman, Mercer, Samford, The Citadel, UNC Greensboro, Western Carolina, Wofford, VMI

• Sun Belt: Appalachian State, Arkansas State, Coastal Carolina, Georgia State, Louisiana-Lafayette, UT Arlington

• C-USA: Old Dominion, Rice, UTEP, UTSA

• MAC: Buffalo, Central Michigan, Eastern Michigan, Western Michigan

• MVC: Drake, Evansville, Illinois State, Indiana State, Loyola Chicago, Missouri State, Southern Illinois, Valparaiso

• Mountain West: Air Force, Boise State, Colorado State, Fresno State, Nevada, New Mexico, San José State, UNLV, Wyoming

• A-10: George Washington, Saint Joseph’s

• WCC: Loyola Marymount, Pacific, Pepperdine, Portland, San Diego, San Francisco, Santa Clara

• SEC: Ole Miss, Vanderbilt

• Pac-12: Utah, Washington

• ACC: Boston College, Miami (FL), North Carolina, Pitt, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest

• Big East: Georgetown

• Big 12: Iowa State, TCU

• Big Ten: Nebraska, Northwestern

In this scenario, this tier comprises a little over 42% of Division I. In any other year, every conference tournament would be played in its entirety, so that number would be closer to 80%.

Even here, tournaments for quite a few one-bid leagues were completed, so—as is supposed to happen—we’ve got entire conferences sitting on the bench except for the one team that won them.

But as we head down the list, we start to run into multi-bid leagues and some names we’re used to seeing on the 68-team bracket. These teams had bad years that ended before the world shut down (especially North Carolina, eesh), but if this had happened in most other years, they would still be in contention for the championship.

Let’s meet the teams in their position who were still in contention, however dubiously.

Let us finally begin crowning champions.

Tenuously Champions

Three teams lost in their conference tournament and were still listed as an at-large on at least one bracket in the Bracket Matrix but not in the consensus field of 68. I’ll include the number of brackets that included each team in [brackets].¹

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• Missouri Valley: Northern Iowa [7]

• Pac-12: Stanford [25]

• Big East: Xavier [52]

Xavier, Stanford, and Northern Iowa were listed as the first, third, and fourth teams out on the matrix, respectively. Xavier was listed on just two fewer brackets than “last team in” UCLA, which ostensibly means it was more-or-less a toss-up as to which team should have been included. But Xavier lost their only Big East Tournament game to DePaul,² while UCLA had yet to play a game in the Pac-12 Tournament before it got cancelled, so UCLA still had a chance to improve their résumé while Xavier didn’t.

Stanford ended the season on a three-game losing streak, their final nail in the coffin coming against rival Cal, the worst team in the Pac-12 on KenPom. Today, in Year 8 at the helm, Jerod Haase still hasn’t led Stanford to the NCAA Tournament. 2020 was certainly their best chance.

Northern Iowa was a mid-major metric darling who thrashed almost everyone in the MVC and won just enough of their big games to land themselves on the bubble come conference tournament time. Their last game of the regular season was emblematic of the year that was, as they crushed Drake 70-43 on the road. Their very next game was six days later in the MVC Tournament quarterfinals. That same Drake team unexpectedly clobbered them 77-56, leading 92.8% of bracketologists on the Matrix to relegate them to the NIT.

But that 7.2% is all we need to crown them national champions, and I’ll tell you why.

In 2016, the selection committee turned in perhaps the most baffling bracket in the 64-team era. Here’s a CliffsNotes recap of things most bracketologists agree they got wrong:

1. Michigan State—nearly a consensus 1-seed on the 144-bracket matrix—was inexplicably given a 2-seed while less deserving Oregon and Virginia teams got 1-seeds ahead of them.³

2. The assignment of top seeds to certain regions made no sense and suggested the committee was deliberately ignoring its own rules on this matter.

3. St. Bonaventure (listed on 124 out of 144 brackets with an average seed of 10.21) was left out of the field entirely while Syracuse (listed on just 55 brackets) was somehow awarded a 10-seed.⁴

4. Two deserving mid-majors on the west coast, Saint Mary’s and San Diego State, were excluded while an uninspiring Vanderbilt team received an 11-seed.

But the most ridiculous error, and the one that’s important here, is:

5. Tulsa was included in the field of 68 for precisely no reason.

SB Nation’s Rodger Sherman called their inclusion “the most out-of-left field pick I’ve ever seen”. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi, the first person any fan thinks of when they hear the word “bracketology”, called it “indefensible by every known standard”.

Nobody understood this. Nobody…except Drew from Minnesota, the only bracketologist in the matrix who smelled what the committee was cooking.

“I’m a bit shocked, to be honest,” he said. Not of Tulsa’s inclusion, mind you, but of how nobody else saw it coming. “I’ve had them in nearly all of my brackets over the last month. I can’t believe not a single other bracket included them. I suppose I’ll take whatever credit may be due.”

In addition to proving that Minnesota is the ball-knowingest of states, this sets our baseline for 2020 national title claims. Tulsa got blown out by a bad Memphis team in their only conference tournament game in 2016, then were included on just one bracket in the matrix, but were still invited to the Tournament.

If it can happen to them, it could just as easily happen to Xavier, Stanford, and Northern Iowa.

Congrats to the champs.

Let’s crown some more.

Conceivably Champions

Our second largest tier, 106 teams had yet to lose in their conference tournament but were not listed as an at-large on any brackets in the matrix.

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• MEAC: Bethune–Cookman, Coppin State, Morgan State, NC Central, Norfolk State, North Carolina A&T

• SWAC: Jackson State, Prairie View A&M, Southern, Texas Southern

• Southland: Abilene Christian, Lamar, Nicholls, Northwestern State, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin

• America East: Hartford, Vermont

• WAC: Chicago State, CSU Bakersfield, Grand Canyon, Kansas City, New Mexico State, Seattle, Utah Valley, UTRGV

• MAAC: Monmouth, Niagara, Quinnipiac, Rider, Saint Peter’s, Siena

• Big West: Cal State Fullerton, CSUN, Hawai’i, Long Beach State, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara

• Big Sky: Eastern Washington, Idaho State, Montana, Montana State, Northern Colorado, Portland State, Sacramento State, Southern Utah

• Ivy: Harvard, Penn, Princeton, Yale

• Sun Belt: Georgia Southern, Little Rock, South Alabama, Texas State

• C-USA: Charlotte, FIU, Florida Atlantic, Louisiana Tech, Marshall, North Texas, UAB, Western Kentucky

• MAC: Akron, Ball State, Bowling Green, Kent State, Miami (OH), Northern Illinois, Ohio, Toledo

• A-10: Davidson, Duquesne, Fordham, George Mason, La Salle, Rhode Island, Saint Louis, St. Bonaventure, UMass, VCU

• American: East Carolina, SMU, South Florida, Temple, Tulane, Tulsa, UCF, UConn

• SEC: Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, South Carolina, Texas A&M

• Pac-12: California, Oregon State, Washington State

• ACC: Clemson, Notre Dame, Syracuse

• Big East: DePaul, St. John’s

• Big 12: Kansas State

• Big Ten: Minnesota

This brings our total number of 2020 national champions to 109!

It’s finally happened. I’ve finally lived to see a Minnesota natty!

That was such a frustrating season for Minnesota. The B1G was absurdly loaded in 2020, so even though Minnesota finished the season ranked 27th in KenPom, they were 15-16 at the time of the cancellation and were absolutely not being selected to the Tournament unless they got the autobid. Congrats to the champs.

St. John’s also deserves special mention here. On that afternoon of Thursday, March 12, as every conference cancelled their tournaments one by one, the Big East decided to roll the dice and start the day’s scheduled quarterfinal action. The first game of the day was 1-seed Creighton against 9-seed St. John’s. The underdogs led 38-35 after one half. They never played the second. Congrats to the champs.

But these power conference failsons aren’t the stars of the show here. Look at all these mid-major and low major⁵ teams whose conferences hadn’t completed their tournaments. From the Tournament regulars (Norfolk State, Texas Southern, Vermont, et al) to the NMTC⁶ members (Chicago State, UC Riverside, Sacramento State, et al), all can finally call themselves champions. They made it. You can’t prove that they wouldn’t have. Congrats to the champs.

The ground only gets sturdier from here. Let’s keep moving.

Believably Champions

Seven teams were still alive in their conference tournament and were listed on at least one bracket in the matrix but not in the consensus field of 68. Again, the number of brackets that included each team is in [brackets].

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• American: Memphis [1]

• SEC: Arkansas [2], Mississippi State [5], Tennessee [1]

• Big 12: Texas [43], Oklahoma State [1]

• Big Ten: Purdue [2]

This brings our total number of 2020 national champions to 116!

Just for fun, let’s look at the path each of these teams had in their conference tournaments.

The American was one of four conferences whose tournament hadn’t even started by the time everything shut down.⁷ Memphis was the 6-seed and drew 11-seed East Carolina in the first round. Metrically, East Carolina was the worst team in the conference (#217 on KenPom), so Memphis was likely to win that game and advance to a quarterfinal matchup with 3-seed Tulsa. Despite finishing 13-5 in league play and tying for the regular season title, Tulsa wasn’t a very sexy opponent either (#80) so a win here probably wouldn’t have moved the needle too much. If Memphis also won a potential semifinal matchup with 2-seed Houston (#14 and a projected 7-seed in the NCAA Tournament), it might have been enough to put them in, but they needed a lot of other teams to falter. Congrats to the champs.

The SEC Tournament had played only the first round. In that round, 11-seed Arkansas avoided a fatal loss by defeating 14-seed Vanderbilt, the worst team in the league by a mile (#169). Their second round opponent was to be 6-seed South Carolina (#69), and if they won that game, they got 3-seed LSU in the quarterfinals (#37, projected 8-seed). Their chances were similar to Memphis’. Congrats to the champs.

Tennessee was the 8-seed, drawing 9-seed Alabama (#60) for the chance to face 1-seed Kentucky (#29, projected 4-seed). It was a longshot, but they’d just beaten Kentucky on the road the previous week, so two non-home wins against them probably would have meant at least something. Congrats to the champs.

Mississippi State was the 4-seed in the SEC Tournament, which earned them a double bye. They would have faced the winner of 5-seed Florida vs. 13-seed Georgia. The latter would have meant nothing (#96) but the former could have been a quality win (#32, projected 9-seed). If they got Kentucky in the semifinals and beat them, they might have gotten an at-large, but it’s more likely that they still needed to win the autobid. Congrats to the champs.

The Big 12 Tournament had also played just the first round, in which 8-seed Oklahoma State snuck by 9-seed Iowa State to reach the quarterfinals. There, they were slated to face 1-seed Kansas, the most impressive team in the country by a considerable margin (easily #1, unanimously projected 1-seed). Friend of the program Preston Pack swears up and down Oklahoma State was going to win that game. Under normal circumstances, I’d call them completely delusional, but this entire piece is based on that exact blind faith, so let’s say they win that game. Their next opponent is either 5-seed Texas Tech (#21, projected 10-seed) or…

…4-seed Texas. Because Texas was the closest team in this tier to the projected field, if they beat Texas Tech and also took down Kansas, I’d say it’s likely they were selected to the Tournament even if they lost the final (they might have even gotten a 10-seed). But if Oklahoma State beat Kansas before that could happen, Texas was probably out of luck barring an autobid. Congrats to the champs. Oklahoma State started 0-8 in conference play, so their odds were slim, but Kansas was so dominant that I could see them getting an at-large if they took them down. Congrats to the champs.

Finally, Purdue’s B1G Tournament draw was brutal, but if you’re looking to steal an at-large, that’s exactly what you need. They were the 10-seed and were going to face 7-seed Ohio State (#8, projected 5-seed) for the chance to face 2-seed Michigan State (#7, projected 3-seed). If they somehow won both of those, I think they could have gotten an at-large despite entering the conference tournament at just 16-15, but they probably still needed help. Congrats to the champs.

The teams in our last few tiers needed no help.

Reasonably Champions

Four teams lost in their conference tournament but were still listed in the consensus field of 68 on the Bracket Matrix. I’ll include their consensus seed number in (parentheses).

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• Mountain West: San Diego State (2)

• West Coast: BYU (5), Saint Mary’s (8)

• Pac-12: Colorado (8)

This brings our total number of 2020 national champions to 120!

San Diego State is one of the teams everyone cries for in remembrance of the 2020 season. They started the season 26-0 and ended it 30-2, their two losses coming to UNLV in the regular season and to Utah State in the Mountain West Tournament final. Congrats to the champs.

Saint Mary’s was struggling to escape the bubble before beating BYU in the WCC Tournament, saving three bids for the conference in the process. Their spot was safe despite losing to Gonzaga in the final. Congrats to the champs.

Colorado’s spot was also safe even though they finished the season on a five-game losing streak, though I get the feeling they would have been a little lower than the 8-line after all was said and done. Congrats to the champs.

But all was not said and done. Several teams were still alive and playing for something when the lights went out.

Anything could have happened with these teams! Let’s assume they all won the whole thing.

Probably Champions

These 40 teams were still alive in their conference tournament and were also already listed in the consensus field of 68 on Bracket Matrix. Each team’s projected seed is again listed in (parentheses).

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• A-10: Dayton (1), Richmond (11)

• American: Cincinnati (12),⁸ Houston (7), Wichita State (11)

• SEC: Auburn (5), Florida (9), Kentucky (4), LSU (8)

• Pac-12: Arizona (7), Arizona State (10), Oregon (4), UCLA (11), USC (9)

• ACC: Duke (3), Florida State (2), Louisville (4), NC State (11), Virginia (7)

• Big East: Butler (5), Creighton (2), Marquette (9), Providence (8), Seton Hall (3), Villanova (2)

• Big 12: Baylor (1), Kansas (1), Oklahoma (10), Texas Tech (10), West Virginia (6)

• Big Ten: Illinois (7), Indiana (10), Iowa (6), Maryland (3), Michigan (6), Michigan State (3), Ohio State (5), Penn State (6), Rutgers (9), Wisconsin (4)

This brings our total number of 2020 national champions to 160!

Hahaha, man. Remember 10-bid B1G? What a year.

There are only 36 at-large bids on any bracket, but several autobids are also obviously in at-large territory, so the number in this tier is necessarily greater than 36.

Here we have so many of the teams everyone wanted to see compete in the Tournament.

You’ve got the cream of the crop: Kansas, Baylor, Duke, Michigan State, Louisville, and Kentucky were all ranked #1 in the AP Poll at some point during the season (as was one other team we’ll get to in a moment). And who could forget Dayton, Florida State, or the Big East regular season champion trio of Creighton, Villanova, and Seton Hall?

You’ve got basically the entire B1G aiming to finally win a title for the conference for the first time since 2000.

You’ve got the dark horses with a point to prove: Auburn started the year 15-0 coming off a Final Four appearance and Texas Tech struggled to the bubble coming off an overtime loss in the national title game, while UCLA and Cincinnati both had similarly successful years after the former poached the latter’s head coach.

All of the above have legitimate claims to the 2020 national title.

Congrats to the champs.

But none of these teams had punched their tickets to the Big Dance by the time everything got scrapped. In theory, any one of these teams could have missed out. Most obviously, the 10- through 12-seeds weren’t safe, but hey, the selection committee chair that year was Duke athletics director Kevin White. Maybe he wakes up on Selection Sunday, decides he’s going to make a ridiculously indefensible decision—as all Duke-affiliated people do several times daily—and publishes a bracket without Kansas.

Our last tier of champions is shielded even from that. They already won their autobids.

Definitely Champions

In a normal year, we get one autobid for each conference, giving us 32 in total. In 2020, just 12 conference tournaments were completed in time for the end of the world. Here were their winners, with their projected NCAA Tournament seed in (parentheses).

Congratulations to these 2020 national champions!

• Big South: Winthrop (16)

• OVC: Belmont (14)

• NEC: Robert Morris (16)

• ASUN: Liberty (12)

• Patriot: Boston University (16)

• Horizon: Northern Kentucky (15)

• Summit: North Dakota State (15)

• CAA: Hofstra (14)

• SoCon: ETSU (11)

• Missouri Valley: Bradley (14)

• Mountain West: Utah State (11)

• West Coast: Gonzaga (1)

This cements our total number of 2020 national champions as 172!

Gonzaga is the other team who was ranked #1 in the AP Poll during the season. They were a unanimously projected 1-seed on the matrix and it’s a shame we never got to see Filip Petrušev lead a Gonzaga team in the postseason, as he immediately left to go play in Europe. But it was unambiguously going to happen if not for the crisis. Congrats to the champs.

Utah State and ETSU were both bubble teams that dispelled all doubt of their Tournament worthiness by winning their autobids. Congrats to the champs.

The rest of these teams, all of them from one-bid leagues unless Northern Iowa was questionably awarded an at-large, aren’t the names you’d ever expect to call national champions.⁹ But, in this once-in-a-lifetime scenario, they did everything they could to earn the title.

Congrats to the champs.

The Condensed Tierlist

Here are all 172 champions in all six tiers, sorted within tiers by how reasonable their claim is. Teams in the consensus field of 68 have their projected seed shown in (parentheses) and teams outside the consensus field of 68 have the number of brackets that included them shown in [brackets]. Teams included on zero brackets have their KenPom rank shown in {braces}.

Tier 1: Definitely Champions (won autobid)

1. Gonzaga (1)

2. ETSU (11)

3. Utah State (11)

4. Liberty (12)

5. Belmont (14)

6. Bradley (14)

7. Hofstra (14)

8. North Dakota State (15)

9. Northern Kentucky (15)

10. Winthrop (16)

11. Boston University (16)

12. Robert Morris (16)

Tier 2: Probably Champions (still alive; in field of 68)

13. Kansas (1)

14. Baylor (1)

15. Dayton (1)

16. Florida State (2)

17. Villanova (2)

18. Creighton (2)

19. Duke (3)

20. Michigan State (3)

21. Seton Hall (3)

22. Maryland (3)

23. Kentucky (4)

24. Oregon (4)

25. Louisville (4)

26. Wisconsin (4)

27. Ohio State (5)

28. Butler (5)

29. Auburn (5)

30. West Virginia (6)

31. Penn State (6)

32. Iowa (6)

33. Michigan (6)

34. Virginia (7)

35. Illinois (7)

36. Houston (7)

37. Arizona (7)

38. LSU (8)

39. Providence (8)

40. Marquette (9)

41. Florida (9)

42. USC (9)

43. Rutgers (9)

44. Oklahoma (10)

45. Arizona State (10)

46. Indiana (10)

47. Texas Tech (10)

48. Wichita State (11)

49. Richmond (11)

50. NC State (11)

51. UCLA (11)

52. Cincinnati (12)

Tier 3: Reasonably Champions (lost in conference tournament; in field of 68)

53. San Diego State (2)

54. BYU (5)

55. Colorado (8)

56. Saint Mary’s (8)

Tier 4: Believably Champions (still alive; on 1+ brackets but outside field of 68)

57. Texas [43]

58. Mississippi State [5]

59. Purdue [2]

60. Arkansas [2]

61. Memphis [1]

62. Oklahoma State [1]

63. Tennessee [1]

Tier 5: Conceivably Champions (still alive; not on any brackets)

64. Minnesota {27}

65. Syracuse {51}

66. UConn {52}

67. Notre Dame {57}

68. Yale {58}

69. Alabama {60}

70. Saint Louis {62}

71. Rhode Island {65}

72. St. John’s {66}

73. South Carolina {69}

74. Davidson {70}

75. Louisiana Tech {71}

76. Clemson {72}

77. VCU {73}

78. Northern Colorado {75}

79. Vermont {76}

80. North Texas {77}

81. Tulsa {80}

82. Akron {82}

83. Oregon State {87}

84. SMU {88}

85. Kansas State {90}

86. New Mexico State {91}

87. Texas State {93}

88. DePaul {94}

89. Duquesne {95}

90. Georgia {96}

91. Missouri {97}

92. Stephen F. Austin {100}

93. UC Irvine {106}

94. Harvard {110}

95. Western Kentucky {113}

96. Temple {115}

97. Ball State {116}

98. UCF {117}

99. St. Bonaventure {123}

100. Eastern Washington {124}

101. South Florida {125}

102. Washington State {127}

103. Kent State {128}

104. Little Rock {129}

105. Texas A&M {131}

106. Georgia Southern {134}

107. Montana {137}

108. Penn {141}

109. Marshall {143}

110. Siena {145}

111. FIU {149}

112. Princeton {150}

113. Toledo {152}

114. California {153}

115. South Alabama {155}

116. UC Santa Barbara {160}

117. Southern Utah {161}

118. Charlotte {164}

119. UMass {165}

120. Ohio {167}

121. Bowling Green {168}

122. Portland State {173}

123. George Mason {174}

124. La Salle {181}

125. Northern Illinois {182}

126. Sacramento State {183}

127. Abilene Christian {184}

128. Tulane {185}

129. Rider {187}

130. UAB {189}

131. Florida Atlantic {191}

132. Nicholls {193}

133. Saint Peter’s {194}

134. Monmouth {201}

135. California Baptist {202}

136. Hawai’i {208}

137. UC Riverside {211}

138. Sam Houston State {212}

139. Prairie View A&M {213}

140. Seattle {214}

141. East Carolina {217}

142. Montana State {222}

143. UC Davis {225}

144. Miami (OH) {229}

145. CSUN {233}

146. Kansas City {235}

147. Lamar {236}

148. Hartford {243}

149. Fordham {245}

150. UTRGV {249}

151. Southern {250}

152. Quinnipiac {251}

153. Utah Valley {253}

154. Norfolk State {254}

155. Cal State Fullerton {263}

156. Grand Canyon {265}

157. CSU Bakersfield {266}

158. Northwestern State {270}

159. NC Central {272}

160. Texas Southern {278}

161. Jackson State {281}

162. North Carolina A&T {287}

163. Idaho State {291}

164. Bethune–Cookman {292}

165. Long Beach State {297}

166. Niagara {300}

167. Morgan State {322}

168. Coppin State {327}

169. Chicago State {353}

Tier 6: Tenuously Champions (lost in conference tournament; on 1+ brackets but outside field of 68)

170. Xavier [52]

171. Stanford [25]

172. Northern Iowa [7]

We’ve been playing college basketball for about a century and a quarter. Thanks to a postseason tournament, the Helms Foundation, or both, every season since 1901 has at least one team we can point to and officially call national champions.

Every season except 2020.

The Helms Foundation stopped awarding titles in the 1980s, and college basketball has never taken the college football approach of awarding mythical titles based on major polls. There’s no system in place to officially determine one national champion in a modern season that didn’t conclude with an NCAA Tournament.

Why not 172?

(Dayton would have won.)

1. Yes, I’m very clever.

2. DePaul was a top-100 team in 2020, so that wasn’t quite as embarrassing as it sounds today, though it was still pretty embarrassing.

3. Michigan State ended up losing in the Round of 64 to 15-seed Middle Tennessee. That still doesn’t mean the committee got it right.

4. Syracuse ended up making it all the way to the Final Four. That still doesn’t mean the committee got it right.

5. Hey, that’s the name of the show!

6. Never Made the Tournament Club

7. The other three were the Big West, the Ivy League, and the WAC.

8. Cincinnati was listed as the American autobid on most brackets because they were the 1-seed in the conference tournament, but they were also just barely on the right side of the at-large bubble.

9. Not in this sport, at least