KANSAS CITY, Mo. (March 4, 2021) – The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) has officially announced the 48-team field and pairings for the 2021 NAIA Men’s Basketball National Championship Opening Rounds, presented by Ballogy. The inaugural opening round events take place March 12-13 at eight (8) sites throughout the nation. Each of these locations feature two (2), three-team brackets, totaling 16 (two at each of the eight sites).
 
Warner (TSC regular season champion) and Keiser (Sun Conference Tournament Champion) each earned automatic bids and will represent the Sun Conference in this year’s tournament.
 
Warner (18-6) earned the conference’s regular season bid and is the No. 2 seed in the Montgomery Bracket B pool. Making their eighth appearance in the NAIA National Championship, the Royals will take on the Tennessee Wesleyan Bulldogs (16-8) out of the Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC). The opening round contest is set for on Friday, March 12, in Montgomery, Alabama.

 
Keiser (20-9) earned the conference’s other automatic bid as the tournament champion and will be making its 12th appearance in the NAIA National Championship. The Seahawks are the No. 3 seed in the Montgomery A Bracket and will take on the No. 2-seeded Georgetown (Ky.) Tigers (16-7) out of the Mid-South Conference. The first-round contest will take place on Thursday, March 12, in Montgomery, Alabama.
 
The Montgomery Bracket (Pool A & B) will be hosted by Faulkner University.
 
The winners of each of these brackets advance to the 2021 NAIA National Championship Final Site in Kansas City, Mo., at the 83rd annual NAIA Men’s Basketball National Championship, March 18-23. For more information on the national championship, click here.
 
The field consists of 36 automatic qualifiers and one host berth – given to conference regular season champions, regular season runners-up, tournament champions, tournament runners-up, or a team selected by the conference in absence of a tournament, depending on the league. The number of participating teams in each league determines the number of automatic bids in each conference. Leagues that started with 10 or more schools receive two automatic berths, while conferences with less than 10 institutions receive one. If a conference started with 15 or more schools, they receive three automatic berths.
 
This year, due to COVID, each conference was allowed a drop of up to three schools from where they started in order to keep their original auto berth total. Any conference that started with one auto berth was guaranteed to keep it.
 
At-large teams were determined by the NAIA Men’s Basketball National Selection Committee (NSC). The NSC consists of one representative from each geographic area and six at-large members. The committee evaluated teams throughout the year on various criteria.
For more information on NAIA Men’s Basketball, click here.
 

Opening Round Notes

• Overall, there are 30 repeat qualifiers from the both the 2020 Division I and Division II fields.

• Indiana Wesleyan boasts the highest win total in the field at 29-2 on the year.

• Georgetown (Ky.) leads the field with its 40^th appearance in the men’s basketball championship field. Cumberlands (Ky.) checks-in at second on that list with its 29^th while College of the Ozarks (Mo.) is third in its 24^th. Bellevue (Neb.), Olivet Nazarene (Ill.), Xavier (La.) and Northwestern (Iowa) all now have at least 20 appearances under their belts.

• There are two newcomers to the opening round in this year’s field in Benedictine – Mesa (Ariz.) and Texas A&M Texarkana.

• The Crossroads and the Mid-South lead all conferences with four teams each.