NCAA bracketology roundup: Gophers now on the outside looking in

It’s finally here. The month of March is upon us. That means the madness of the NCAA tournament is closer than ever.

As the college basketball season heats up, FOX Sports North rounds up what experts are saying about which seed the Minnesota Gophers will be assigned in the NCAA tournament — if they make it, of course. This is the fifth edition of the 2020-21 bracket roundup.

At one point of the 2020-21 season, the Minnesota Gophers men’s basketball team owned one of the more impressive resumes in college hoops.

On Jan. 16, the Gophers were 11-4 and had beaten ranked opponents like then-No. 4 Iowa and then-No. 17 Michigan State. Minnesota also defeated Michigan 75-57 on Jan. 6 and remains the only team to take down the Wolverines — now ranked No. 2 — this season.

However, since that upset victory over Michigan, the Gophers are 2-8 in their last 10 games. Minnesota is currently on a five-game skid, including back-to-back losses against Big Ten bottom-dwellers Northwestern and Nebraska last week.

When we glanced at bracket predictions around the web last week, it looked like the Gophers were slotted for an 11 seed in the NCAA tournament. But after two bad losses, just about every bracket pundit is leaving Minnesota off their field of 68.

Bracket Matrix, a website dedicated to compiling bracketology data from all corners of the internet, left the Gophers off their field. Out of the 100 brackets the website tracks, only five had the Gophers in the tournament. Last week, that number was 84 of 100.

None of the brackets from notable sports outlets like The Athletic and Watch Stadium included the Gophers in the tournament fields.

Minnesota has two games left on its schedule — a road tilt against Penn State on Wednesday and a home game against Rutgers on Saturday to close out the regular season.

Even if the Gophers win both of those games and improve to 15-12, it won’t be enough to make the NCAA tournament. It looks like Minnesota will likely have to win the Big Ten tournament, or at least make it to the conference title game, to get back into the tourney.

But hey, crazier things have happened.