The biggest unknown leading into the bracket reveal for this year's NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament had little to do with bubble teams or top seeds. Instead, it was the not so simple matter of which programs would be healthy enough to be part of March Madness.
Kansas and Virginia, two teams hit with COVID-19 breakouts over the past week, made it into the bracket released Sunday by the NCAA selection committee, signaling both schools believe they'll have enough healthy players to be ready for their tipoffs next weekend.
That there was any doubt about those two - Kansas is a perennial national power and Virginia is the reigning champion - securing spots in the 68-team field was the most jarring reminder the 2021 tournament itself is no sure thing.
"There were a lot of different things about this year's selection process," said committee chairman Mitch Barnhart, also the athletic director at Kentucky.
A year after the tournament was canceled as the COVID-19 virus was mushrooming into a worldwide pandemic, all 68 teams will gather in Indiana for all 67 games beginning Thursday with the First Four and ending April 5 with the national championship game in Indianapolis. That's the plan, anyway - all it takes is a single coronavirus outbreak within a team to upend the finely calibrated beauty of that schedule. More than one, and the entire endeavor could crater.
There were no surprises when the four No. 1 seeds were announced. Gonzaga, Baylor, Illinois and Michigan earned those slots - with overall No. 1 seed Gonzaga (26-0) an 11-4 favorite to win it all and become the first team since the Indiana Hoosiers in 1976 to finish a season undefeated.
The last teams to earn the 37 at-large bids - one more than usual because the Ivy League canceled play this year - were Drake and Wichita State, which play Thursday in a First Four game, and UCLA and Michigan State, two decorated programs with surprisingly low seeds that meet in another of the play-in games.
"Heck of a game to start the tournament," Barnhart said with tongue in cheek.
Four teams that didn't make it - Louisville, Colorado State, Saint Louis and Ole Miss - have been put on standby. They could find their way into the bracket if a team in the field notifies the NCAA by Tuesday night that it must withdraw because of health concerns. After that, if a team pulls out, its opponent will advance via what is essentially a forfeit.
Fittingly for such an unpredictable season, some teams hoping to sneak in off the bubble were denied when the Pac-12's Oregon State and the Big East's Georgetown - coached by its own former superstar, Patrick Ewing - won their conference tournaments to steal bids they wouldn't otherwise have won.
Another unexpected entry is a familiar face: Rick Pitino. The veteran coach, ousted at Louisville after a sordid recruiting scandal that enveloped the program for years, led his new team, Iona, from the ninth seed in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference all the way to the league title and the automatic bid that comes with it. The Gaels open Saturday against Alabama (24-6), a No. 2 seed after sweeping the Southeastern Conference titles.
Iona (12-5) played only 13 regular-season games because of COVID-19 concerns that sidelined the Gaels for weeks. It was that kind of season.
And if fans needed any more evidence of how unfamiliar this tournament will feel, maybe it's this: For the first time since 1976, Duke and Kentucky are both missing from the bracket. Like Virginia and Kansas, Duke pulled out of its conference tournament last week because of COVID-19. The Blue Devils announced that marked the end of their season, before telling the NCAA that, yes, they'd be available for March Madness if asked.
No dice. The 13-11 record for the Atlantic Coast Conference program wasn't enough.
Kansas and ACC regular-season champion Virginia were never in doubt until the coronavirus hit both programs. Kansas (20-8) will bring a No. 3 seed into the tournament's West quadrant - the NCAA stuck with the usual names of the regions despite centralizing the games - while the Cavaliers (18-6) are a No. 4 seed in the same part of the bracket.
They're also the most unusual of reigning champions. They won it all in 2019 and were poised for a run at a repeat last March when sports got wiped off the map by the still nascent pandemic. A year later, sports are back, but the hoops the NCAA is jumping through to make this tournament happen are a symbol of how far we are from normal.
The decision to place all the games in and around the Indianapolis area is unprecedented. Also unique are the quarantine-like situations all teams will be under during their stay. Players will get their own rooms and teams will have their own floors in a cluster of hotels around the downtown convention center. That facility, usually a magnet for fan festivals and coaching conferences, will turn into the main practice and meeting area for all the teams. Players will have to produce negative tests for seven days before arriving in Indianapolis to be eligible to play.
And if they're not? In one of its most eye-grabbing tidbits, the NCAA announced that if a team is hit with the virus but still has five players who can pass the protocol, that's enough to get on the floor for tipoff.
All just another piece of the puzzle for Americans to consider when they get back to a much-missed rite of spring: filling out their brackets, crossing their fingers and waiting for the madness to begin.