NCAA Tournament

Basketball fans sing it with me: "It's the most wonderful time of the year!"

March Madness is upon us as the NCAA tournament is set to begin this week. It's a time when even the most casual sports fan becomes a men's college basketball expert, using in-depth analysis to forecast who will emerge as champion out of 68 teams.

So it's time to prove your expertise, and we've got you covered with a full printable bracket that can be found here.

Here's a look at some of the favorites in this year's tournament to help you make the right picks.

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West: Gonzaga

Could this finally be the year when the Bulldogs win the national championship?

Gonzaga is again a favorite to cut down the nets after earning the No. 1 overall seed for the fourth time in five tournaments. The Bulldogs won the WCC championship, defeating Saint Mary's in the tournament final to avenge a loss from two weeks ago.

Five players average over 11 points per game for the Zags. Junior forward Drew Timme leads the way with 17.5 points and 6.3 rebounds, followed by star freshman Chet Holmgren's 14.2 points and 9.6 rebounds.

The Bulldogs have a consistent rotation and can match up against any team in the tournament. After losing in last year's title game, Gonzaga will be hungry to finish the job this season.

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South: Arizona

The Arizona Wildcats finished off a strong year with an undefeated run in the Pac-12 tournament for their first conference championship since 2018. They had just one loss in their last 13 games of the regular season.

Sophomore guard Bennedict Mathurin had a breakout year with 17.4 points and 5.6 rebounds per game, while second-year forward Azuolas Tubelis is adding 14.5 points and 6.4 rebounds.

Arizona is not a team that should be slept on. It took care of business against top competition in the conference, going a combined 3-1 against USC and UCLA.

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East: Baylor

After a stretch of midseason struggles, the national champions looked like they were clicking at the right time. Baylor closed out the regular season by winning five straight games and seven of its final eight.

But the Bears fell short once again in the Big 12 tournament, suffering an upset loss to Oklahoma in the quarterfinals. However, it wasn't enough to knock Baylor from the No. 1 line.

The Bears are led by a three-headed backcourt monster consisting of Adam Flagler, LJ Cryer and James Akinjo. Each of them average over 13 points per game.

The Bears went 5-3 against ranked competition this season, but this is an experienced team with just three freshmen on the roster that is hungry to defend its title.

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Midwest: Kansas

Kansas suffered two losses in its last four regular-season games, but a championship win in the Big 12 tournament was exactly what the team needed to steal a No. 1 seed.

The Jayhawks are a dangerous team with sharpshooter Ochai Agbaji leading the charge. The senior has poured in 19.7 points per game this season. Christian Braun is also a strong contributor with averages of 14.6 points and 6.4 rebounds.

Kansas went just 4-4 against ranked opponents during the regular season. However, a strong performance in the conference tournament should provide a boost in confidence heading into the Big Dance.

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Other Teams to Watch

Auburn looked to be on its way to a No. 1 seed, but a loss to Texas A&M in the SEC tournament quarterfinals derailed those plans. The Tigers are powered by star freshman Jabari Smith, who has exceeded the hype with averages of 17.1 points and 7.0 rebounds.

Kentucky is led by arguably the best big man in the country in Oscar Tshiebwe, who is a force on both ends of the floor.

A junior transfer from West Virginia, the 22-year-old has dominated this year with 17.0 points, 15.1 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game.

Duke is extra motivated to win a championship in Mike Krzyzewski's final season. Star freshman Paolo Banchero has had just two games under 10 points this year.

Purdue was the class in the Big Ten until back-to-back losses near the end of the regular season. 

Parity has been the theme of this year's men's college basketball season, so it wouldn't be out of the question to see some surprises in the tournament. Teams such as Villanova, Tennessee, Wisconsin and UCLA have had strong seasons and could make a run if they peak at the right time.

Let the Madness begin.

The 2022 NCAA men's tournament bracket was released Sunday, and the 68 teams now know the paths they will need to navigate to cut down the nets. Fans looking to fill out brackets and compete in office pools won't have long to do their research, either, as the First Four games begin Tuesday.

Here is a look at the bracket and a championship prediction.

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2022 NCAA Men's Tournament Bracket

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Championship Prediction

Picking the nation's best team may not be as exciting as predicting upsets when it comes to filling out brackets in March, but it's probably the best way to win your office pool.

And the best team this season is the Gonzaga Bulldogs.

They landed the overall No. 1 seed in Sunday's bracket reveal, and they will win the necessary six games to cut down the nets as national champions for the first time in school history after coming so close last season before losing in the title game to Baylor.

One look at the Bulldogs' resume shows how talented they are this season.

They lost just three times overall and once in West Coast Conference play but avenged that defeat to Saint Mary's in the conference tournament championship game. Their two nonconference losses were nothing to be ashamed of, either, considering they came via a combined 12 points to Duke and Alabama.

Mark Few's team also notched impressive nonconference wins against Texas, UCLA and Texas Tech. Every one of its league victories came by double digits, including the 13-point win over Saint Mary's in the tournament championship game.

The thing that makes Gonzaga so dangerous is its ability to win on both ends of the floor.

The Bulldogs are No. 1 in KenPom.com's offensive efficiency rankings and No. 7 in defensive efficiency. They are the only team in the country that finished in the top 10 in each category, which means they will not be reliant on their offense or defense alone to make a deep run.

Gonzaga also has the star power to take over in crunch time.

There may not be a better frontcourt in the nation than Chet Holmgren and Drew Timme, and the presence of both on the floor means opponents will have to pick and choose when to double-team.

The backcourt trio of Julian Strawther, Andrew Nembhard and Rasir Bolton is also formidable, and all three of them can capitalize from three-point range when Timme and Holmgren attract extra attention in the frontcourt.

Perhaps no game underscores how dangerous the entire group can be than the conference tournament championship win over Saint Mary's. With the Gaels focused on at least containing Timme and Holmgren, the three guards combined to shoot 8-of-11 from deep in an offensive clinic.

It looked like a championship formula, and the Bulldogs will attempt to unleash it in the Big Dance.

Championship Week in men's college basketball means the time has finally come for America's favorite game of deceptively partial information: Blind NCAA tournament resumes.

In theory, the NCAA tournament selection committee tries to strip away the names of the teams and just compare the resumes without any sort of bias. But that is, of course, impossible and impractical, because if you've watched as much college basketball as these committee members have, all it takes is a quick glance at the list of opponents faced, and they know whose resume it is.

But we actually can strip away the names and talk almost exclusively in metrics in order to compare two teams side by side in anonymity.

On these blind resumes, you'll find the following acronyms/abbreviations:

NET—NCAA Evaluation Tool. This is the primary sorting metric by which quadrant records are determined. Generally speaking, a team's NET isn't as important as the NET of its opponents, but it still matters.

RES—Resume metrics. This is the average of Kevin Pauga Index and Strength of Record, which are the results-based metrics. The lower the number, the better.

QUAL—Quality metrics. This is the average of KenPom, Sagarin and BPI, which are the predictive metrics. Margin of victory is a huge factor here, and, again, the lower the number, the better.

SOS / NCSOS—Strength of Schedule / Nonconference Strength of Schedule. For the most part, not important as a standalone data point, as schedule strength is all kind of baked into the numbers. But a team with a top-10 schedule might get some benefit of the doubt, while a team that's 300th or worse in NCSOS might get penalized for that lack of effort.

Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4—The Quadrants. Back in the day, we used to just talk about records against top 50, top 100, etc., but they changed up the team sheets a few years ago to more adequately account for where the games were played. Q1 consists of home games against the NET top 30, neutral-site games against the NET top 50 and road games against the NET top 75. Q2 is home vs. 31-75, neutral vs. 51-100 and road vs. 76-135. Q3 is home vs. 76-160, neutral vs. 101-200 and road vs. 136-240. And Q4 is everything else. But don't worry about those actual numbers. Just know that Q1 wins are good and Q4 losses are bad.

With that glossary note out of the way, let's dive in.

                      

Blind Resume Comparison No. 1

Team A: 23-5, NET: 43, RES: 45.0, QUAL: 63.7, NCSOS: 57, 0-1 vs. Q1A, 1-1 vs. Q1, 10-0 vs. Q4, 9-1 road record

Team B: 18-12, NET: 76, RES: 54.5, QUAL: 67.3, NCSOS: 294, 4-4 vs. Q1A, 6-5 vs. Q1, 5-1 vs. Q4, 4-9 road record

Normally, the point of blind resumes is to compare two teams that look similar on the surface but are considered to be far apart from each other in the projected seeding. After comparing the two, maybe the reader will agree that one of the teams is considerably over-/under-seeded.

But I wanted to instead start with a classic debate between a mid-major that didn't screw up too much and a high-major that is getting a whole lot of credit for showing up in a big way for 20 percent of its games played. Because these are the exact conversations the selection committee will be having all week.

Though there is a substantial gap in the NET between Team A and Team B, the differences in the resume and quality metrics are negligible. Rather, the four main differences are overall record, Quadrant 1 record, road record and nonconference strength of schedule.

On the latter two of those four, shame on Team B.

A nonconference strength of schedule approaching 300 is a fine way to cost yourself at least a seed line, if not a spot in the field altogether. Team B played 10 nonconference games, six of them at home against teams outside of the NET top 290. Worst of all, it lost one of those six games. And it went just 1-3 in the other four games, with the lone win coming against Quadrant 3.

Comparatively, Team A played in one of the bigger early-season tournaments, getting three neutral-site games against top 100 foes. It also scheduled games against Wichita State and Buffalo, who are typically pretty solid.

The road record part of the equation isn't quite as concerning. You expect a split like that when comparing a mid-major to a high-major. But a .900 winning percentage on the road is certainly a feather in Team A's cap, while Team B's .308 is a bit of a red flag.

But the quality wins metric is where Team B makes up all sorts of ground on Team A.

While this doesn't appear on the team sheets, something I always try to look at is that Team A went 0-2 against the projected field, while Team B went 7-5.

Seems like a slam dunk for Team B, doesn't it? Don't forget overall record, though, because those records against the field mean Team A went 23-3 against other teams and Team B went 11-7.

If you haven't already figured it out, Team A is North Texas, and Team B is Rutgers. And these divergent resumes may be battling for the last spot in the projected field.

With any luck, the Mean Green will take case of business in the Conference USA tournament to get in with the automatic bid. But if they were to lose to UAB in the championship game, it would make for an interesting discussion. It's a shame they suffered their worst loss of the season (at UTEP) in their final game, because that might have pushed them out of the at-large mix for good.

           

Blind Resume Comparison No. 2

Team C: 21-8, NET: 51, RES: 33.0, QUAL: 56.0, 2-3 vs. Q1, 6-7 vs. Q1/Q2, 15-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Team D: 22-9, NET: 59, RES: 36.0, QUAL: 60.3, 4-1 vs. Q1, 9-6 vs. Q1/Q2, 13-3 vs. Q3/Q4

These are two of the resume metrics darlings.

Those metrics (Kevin Pauga Index and Strength of Record) are much closer to the old RPI system, in that they only care about who you faced and where you faced them and do not factor in margin of victory. Generally speaking, if you see a team ranked much better in resume metrics than quality metrics, it either means it wins a lot of close games, it gets blown out in losses or a little bit of both.

And generally speaking, a top-40 resume metrics ranking is money in the bank. Between 2019 and 2021, the only top-40 resume team to get left out of the tournament was Louisville last year. The Cardinals finished at 36.0, albeit with a 13-7 overall record and just a 1-6 record against Quadrant 1.

Both of these teams are much better off than that.

Has either one done enough to get in, though?

The eye is immediately drawn to the Quadrant 1 records, where Team D has a considerable edge. And if you drill down even further, Team D went 3-0 against the top half of Quadrant 1, while Team C went 0-2 in those opportunities. Granted, there's not a huge difference between Team D's road wins over NET Nos. 37 and 39 and Team C's road wins over NET Nos. 45 and 52, the latter of which land in the bottom half of Q1. But Team D certainly has the trump card in the form of a road win over NET No. 9.

However, just like Rutgers in the previous comparison, Team D has seven losses to teams not projected for the NCAA tournament. The good news is that all seven of those games at least came against teams currently in the NET top 100, so nothing individually sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, having seven losses (four of them at home) against NIT- or CBI-bound opponents isn't great.

Team C also has four such losses, though, and just a 1-4 record against the projected field.

Ready for the reveal?

Team C is VCU, and that one win against the projected field was against Davidson, which is barely on the good side of the bubble in its own right. Shoutout to Bluejay Banter's Tim Krueger for bringing this to my attention in the past week: VCU is just 2-6 against the NET top 75, plus an unsavory home loss to Wagner. The resume metrics love the Rams, but I cannot figure out why.

Team D is Miami, whose aforementioned trump card was the win at Duke.

Even though the metrics and overall records are quite similar, it sure looks like Miami is in much better shape than VCU. We'll see if that remains the case after the ACC and Atlantic 10 tournaments, but I suspect the Rams are going to need the automatic bid in order to sneak into the field.   

          

Blind Resume Comparison No. 3

Team F: 17-14, NET: 42, RES: 56.0, QUAL: 37.7, SOS: 7, NCSOS: 146, 3-11 vs. Q1, 9-13 vs. Q1/Q2

Team G: 18-12, NET: 44, RES: 62.5, QUAL: 38.7, SOS: 50, NCSOS: 315, 3-7 vs. Q1, 6-11 vs. Q1/Q2

Might as well jump straight from the resume metrics darlings to the quality metrics darlings.

The track record for tournament inclusion is nowhere near as good for this group. In 2019 alone, NC State (28.0 quality metrics), Clemson (29.0), Texas (32.7), Nebraska (37.0) and Indiana (40.0) were all left out of the dance. Duke (30.7) was the only such team in 2021, but, come on, if the Blue Devils can't get in when the predictive metrics call them the 30th-best team in the country, what hope do these teams have in the 37-39 range?

In fact, both of these are out of the consensus projected field, though not by much. As of Monday night, Team G was the second team out on the Bracket Matrix, while Team F was the fourth team out. So figuring out a proper order for these two teams could prove crucial.

The sheer volume of losses is the obvious problem here. They have a combined total of one defeat to a team outside of the NET top 100, but 26 total losses is, well, a lot. Team F and Team G each have three Quadrant 1 wins, but look at how many chances they got. Team G went 3-of-10, while Team F went 3-of-14.

And for each team, one of those top wins (at NET No. 71 for Team F; NET No. 50 on a neutral court for Team G) just barely qualifies as Quadrant 1. They could be a data refresh away from dropping to 2-of-9 and 2-of-13.

Though not specifically listed above, Quadrant 2 is where Team F makes up some serious ground, going 6-2 against those opponents, while Team G went 3-4. And it bears mentioning that if you split Q2 into a top half and a bottom half, the top-half records are 5-2 for Team F and 1-4 for Team G. That puts their respective records against the top 1.5 quadrants at 8-13 (38.1 percent) and 4-11 (26.7 percent).

Factor in the substantial differences in both overall and nonconference strength of schedule, and it's pretty clear that the 14 in the loss column is the only reason why most bracketologists have Team F (Oklahoma) behind Team G (Indiana).

To that end, we must point out that Vanderbilt got into the 2017 NCAA tournament as a No. 9 seed with a 19-15 record. Those Commodores had three wins over Florida (which earned a No. 4 seed), a home win over Iowa State (No. 5 seed), a home win over South Carolina (No. 7 seed) and a road win over Arkansas (No. 8 seed).

Oklahoma only has half that many wins over projected tournament teams, but it does have an absolutely massive opportunity against Baylor on Thursday. Win that one and the Sooners will probably get in. Lose it and they're almost certainly out.

Indiana also has just three wins against the projected field, but one of those came against bubble-y Notre Dame, and the Hoosiers put together a laughably weak nonconference schedule. If you take out the Q4 home nonconference games, they're just 11-12 overall. So they definitely need to beat Michigan on Thursday and likely need to beat Illinois on Friday in order to crash the dance.

                   

Blind Resume Comparison No. 4

Team H: 22-10, NET: 55, RES: 58.5, QUAL: 60.3, SOS: 66, 1-4 vs. Q1A, 4-6 vs. Q1, 7-9 vs. Q1/Q2, 13-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Team J: 18-12, NET: 36, RES: 47.5, QUAL: 43.7, SOS: 31, 0-6 vs. Q1A, 5-9 vs. Q1, 9-11 vs. Q1/Q2, 7-1 vs. Q3/Q4

Chances are you're going to come away from this final comparison thinking that Team J is in drastically better shape than Team H. However, one of these teams is third-to-last in on the Bracket Matrix, and the other is the third team out.

As far as the metrics are concerned, it's Team J by a landslide. It has an 11-spot edge in the resume metrics, and there's nearly a 20-spot gap in both NET and quality metrics. Team J also faced a more difficult schedule, although it's not like Team H loaded up on cupcakes.

In the quality wins department, at least Team H was able to catch one big fish, winning at NET No. 25. Team J repeatedly squandered those opportunities, though I will point out that three of those six games came right down to the wire, including one triple-overtime classic.

Team J at least somewhat made up for that 0-6 record by going 5-3 against the bottom half of Q1 and winning five games against projected tournament teams. Team H went 3-2 against the bottom half of Q1 and has a total of three wins over projected tournament teams.

Nothing much worth reporting in Q2 unless you're interested in this common opponent tidbit: Team J went 2-0 against NET No. 66 Creighton, while Team H lost to the Bluejays by 12 on a neutral court. (And there's your gap in wins against projected tournament teams.)

The kicker is the Q3/Q4 loss.

Team J (Xavier) lost at home to NET No. 101 DePaul. Not a big deal, especially if you've watched the Blue Demons play lately. They might mess around and win the Big East tournament. But Team H (BYU) lost at NET No. 297 Pacific. That is a major blemish.

As a rule of thumb, who you beat has always been more important than who beats you. And the Cougars do have three nice wins over Saint Mary's, San Diego State and San Francisco. But that is a terrible defeat for a team that also lost to Utah Valley, Vanderbilt and Santa Clara. It put the Cougars in a spot where they likely needed to beat San Francisco in the WCC quarters in order to have a realistic shot at a bid, but they lost that game by a dozen.

The point of this comparison isn't to rag on BYU, though. Rather, I wanted to show that Xavier is still in relatively good shape despite looking nothing like a tournament team as of late. The Musketeers did win their home finale against Georgetown, but they needed that to snap a five-game losing skid. They lost nine of their final 13 regular-season games to plummet onto the bubble, but their overall resume is strong enough that they should get in as long as they beat Butler on Wednesday.

That would change, though, if DePaul actually does win the Big East tournament or if teams like Oklahoma, Indiana and VCU play their way into the field. But given the current picture, defeating the Bulldogs and at least showing up for the following round against Providence ought to do the trick for the Musketeers.

                               

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.

Selection Sunday is less than three weeks away, but most fans of men's college basketball already have a good idea of which unlikely team(s) they consider capable of reaching the Sweet 16 and beyond.

We asked B/R app users for the team they think might be the Cinderella story of the 2022 men's NCAA tournament.

Two quick thoughts/observations before we dive in.

First, a lot of you need to recalibrate what you think counts as a surprising Sweet 16 run. Alabama and Arkansas were the most popular answers, but two wins by teams in the mix for No. 5 seeds wouldn't be a surprise at all. There were also nominations for UCLA, Duke, Texas Tech and Tennessee, each of which appeared in the selection committee's top-16 reveal this past Saturday. It would be more surprising if those teams failed to reach the Sweet 16.

Second, several users gave some variation of "I'll answer after I see the actual bracket," and good on you for doing the responsible thing, not talking yourself into a dark horse before even knowing the matchups.

That's the smart answer.

It's also the boring answer, and we're here to have some fun.

Here are the responses that stood out among the crowd.

                 

Save a Bracket, Ride a Cowboy

@jack_hart, @h2h003 and @karlBarx118: Wyoming

Wyoming is absolutely going to be my kryptonite in this year's bracket, provided the Cowboys do finish strong enough to make the dance.

The Cowboys entered Wednesday's game at Colorado State with a 22-4 record and a nice stockpile of low Quadrant 1 / solid Quadrant 2 victories. They also have a talented primary trio of Graham Ike (the frontcourt work horse), Drake Jeffries (the perimeter sniper) and Hunter Maldonado (the do-it-all 6'7" point-forward).

However, they got stomped 94-65 at Arizona in their only game against a stone-cold lock for the NCAA tournament. Wyoming is also ranked outside the top 100 in ESPN's BPI, which suggests that it would be expected to lose a neutral-site game against 12-15 Louisville and would only narrowly defeat 11-16 NC State.

If I had to pick a side today, though, I consider myself more of a Wyoming believer than a skeptic.

Ike strikes me as a more durable version of former Michigan State big man Nick Ward. Per KenPom, Ike leads the nation in both percentage of possessions used and fouls drawn per 40 minutes. Basically, they feed him relentlessly, and he does not shy away from contact in the slightest. Ward did that for around 18 minutes a game, but Ike has logged at least 36 minutes on nine occasions.

Sticking with the Spartan comparisons, Maldonado has a bit of a senior-year Denzel Valentine vibe going. Wyoming's point-forward is a little bit taller and nowhere near as dangerous from three-point range, but he is averaging better than 19 points, six assists and five rebounds per game. Of the 10 players in the past three decades to put up those numbers in a season, the only ones to do so at 6'5" or taller are Maldonado, Valentine and Penny Hardaway.

Add a fantastic three-point shooter like Jeffries and you've got a scary-good team that would likely land on the No. 8 or No. 9 line if the tournament started today.

            

#MACtion

@lukeboldon: Ohio

@D_ET: Toledo

@ASAPHERB: Kent State

@Raffle: Toledo Rockets

@bryantzwayer: Ohio Bobcats

The moral of the story here is you're going to want to keep an eye on the Mid-American Conference tournament, because it is liable to produce a Sweet 16-caliber team.

While there's no good way for me to prove it, I promise this section was decided upon before Tuesday night's action, when Ohio's Ben Vander Plas had 10 points, 10 assists and 10 rebounds in a 26-point win over Central Michigan, Toledo went on the road to beat Western Michigan by 42 and Kent State extended its winning streak to nine games behind 42 points from Sincere Carry and a triple-double (17 points, 11 rebounds, 10 assists) from Malique Jacobs.

The to-be-determined MAC champ was already going to be a scary No. 12 or No. 13 seed, and Tuesday further drove that point home.

Of the bunch, the metrics marginally like Toledo the best, but all three have the type of lead guard an entire nation could fall in love with next month.

Carry has averaged 21.0 points and 4.4 assists during Kent State's nine-game winning streak. Mark Sears had scored in double figures in every game for Ohio prior to Tuesday and is one of the best free-throw shooters in the country. Toledo's Ryan Rollins has had 16 games with at least 20 points and has flirted with several triple-doubles.

As long as the MAC champ is one of these three teams, there's going to be a guy who can make the type of impact that Jason Preston did for Ohio in last year's dance.

               

That School Up North

@bkim7957: Well it's definitely not U of M. I wish.

@dahlsheep: Not the NIT bound university of Michigan

@Luke35: Watch out for Michigan

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people have opinions on Michigan right now. Perhaps you heard the Wolverines were in the news this week, and not because they're smack dab on the bubble.

While they certainly aren't a conventional Cinderella candidate, let's touch on the Wolverines since they were brought up a handful of times.

For starters, I don't anticipate the Juwan Howard suspension making much of a difference down the stretch. It will inevitably be a talking point regardless of which direction these final five regular-season games play out, but assistant-turned-temporary-head coach Phil Martelli racked up 444 wins during his time as the head coach at Saint Joseph's. It's not like Michigan is going to be without experienced leadership on the sideline.

And if they do win enough games the rest of the way to get into the tournament (at least two wins, maybe three), the Wolverines could be every bit as dangerous as the UCLA team that went First Four to Final Four last season.

However, it all depends on which versions of their likely one-and-done freshmen show up in March.

Both Caleb Houstan and Moussa Diabate can be major difference makers. The former had a career-high 19 points in a January win at Indiana. The latter went off for 28 points in a recent win at Iowa. And they put up 14 and 15, respectively, in Michigan's Feb. 10 blowout of Purdue.

But whether either freshman will show up on any given night is anyone's guess. Diabate has yet to string together three consecutive games with an O-rating of 100 or better, and Houstan has had just one such three-game streak—not coincidentally coinciding with Michigan's only three-game winning streak of the year.

As such, trusting both guys to show up in a big way throughout a tournament run seems like a great way to lose your bracket pool. However, there's no question that Michigan can compete with anyone when firing on a all cylinders.

               

The Nation's Longest Winning Streak

@sdsujack1999: South Dakota State. Best three-point shooting team in the country. Undefeated in conference play.

@papi_chulo7: Barring any conference tournament upsets, South Dakota State and Murray State have the potential to make a deep run.

@cole26: Murray State Racers! Great guards and got depth

@Ward4DPOY: Murray State

You might know (or correctly assume) that Gonzaga currently has the longest winning streak in the country.

But did you know the Zags are tied with both Murray State and South Dakota State for that honor? Each of those three teams has won 16 consecutive games dating back to before Christmas.

Are either the Racers or the Jackrabbits a legitimate threat to reach the second weekend, though?

For Murray State, my answer is a resounding yes. The Racers have won 23 of their past 24 games with the lone loss coming at Auburn by a respectable 13-point margin. During that time, they won at Memphis (while the Tigers were at full strength), at Belmont by 22 points and they beat fellow Cinderella candidate, Chattanooga, by double digits.

Yes, most of their wins (17 at last check) were either against Quadrant 4 or non-D1 competition, and, yes, they've had a few close calls as of late against what is predominantly a not-good Ohio Valley Conference this year. But most of the metrics paint Murray State as a team that should win its first-round game (if seeded properly as a No. 7 or No. 8) and a team that could give a No. 1 or No. 2 seed one heck of a scare for a spot in the Sweet 16.

South Dakota State is much more likely to end up as a No. 12 or No. 13 seed (provided it wins the Summit League tournament), but I already pity the No. 4 and/or No. 5 seed that has to figure out how to slow down this offensive assault.

The Jackrabbits are leading the nation in three-point shooting by a "Steph Curry vs. everyone else" sort of margin. They are currently sitting at 45.2 percent as a team; Purdue in second place at 40.3 percent. They could literally shoot 0-of-76 from three-point range against Oral Roberts on Thursday and still be slightly ahead of the Boilermakers.

All six Jackrabbits who have attempted at least 65 three-pointers have made at least 40 percent of them, and half of those guys are at 50 percent or better. Just ridiculous stuff.

They are terrible on defense, though. Like, outside the top 200 in adjusted defensive efficiency terrible.

But you know what? So was Oral Roberts last year. Anything's possible when the Summit League champ gets rolling.

              

Kerry Miller covers men's college basketball and college football for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.