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If the NCAA tournament began today, there would be no greater opportunity for bracket arbitrage than the Valparaiso Crusaders. On Jan. 4, Joe Lunardi slotted Valpo in the field as a No. 11 seed. From a pure bracketing perspective, this makes total sense. The 11-3 Crusaders' best win came at Rhode Island; their second-best was at Oregon State. They have three losses: at Oregon, at Ball State, at Belmont. Their at-large resume is lacking, to be sure, and a Horizon League team with a so-so resume entering conference play is almost always doomed to fight for its bid at the conference tournament in March and is basically guaranteed to end up with a double-digit seed. Yet Bryce Drew's team is far better than that resume. Those three road losses came by margins of six, three, and four points. The Crusaders have allowed .87 points per possession in their first 14 games. When adjusted for competition, Valparaiso is playing stingier defense than any team in the country not named Purdue. Opponents manage to rebound just 23.3 percent of their misses, turn the ball over on 21.4 percent of their possessions, shoot just 42.1 percent from 2-point range, attempt just 33.9 percent of their shots at the rim and settle for nearly as many (31.7 percent) low-efficiency midrange jumpers.  Valparaiso's star -- 6-foot-9 forward Alec Peters -- is having a stellar season despite not shooting the ball quite as well as he did last year (when he made 47 percent of his 3s and 50 percent of his 2s). He still has room to improve. That's a running theme: A cavalcade of overlapping injuries have kept the Crusaders from unleashing their full potential, particularly on the offensive end. Drew returned his top eight rotation players this year, but they've yet to play one game as an intact unit. As a result, Valpo is both shooting the ball worse and creating far fewer second chances on the glass than it did a season ago.
The point is, Valparaiso is already one of the best defenses in the country, already has a matchup-nightmare star stretch forward and seems certain to shore up its weaknesses when (if) everyone finally gets healthy. If the tournament began today, there wouldn't be a No. 6 seed in the country that would want to see Drew on the sidelines of its first-round game. By March, when the tournament actually begins, Valparaiso may be even scarier. For the Crusaders to put that fear into their first-round opponent, they have to get there. The most daunting obstacle in their way -- and their opponent at 7 p.m. ET Friday night on ESPN2 -- also happens to be another frightening underdog, if for different reasons. Oakland is a more conventional bracket buster archetype. The Golden Grizzlies aren't particularly well-rounded. They struggle on the defensive end. But they have two ingredients that immediately strike fear in prospective tournament foes: Good 3-point shooting and an absolute stud of a point guard. Kahlil Felder isn't merely one of the nation's best mid-major guards. He's one of the best guards period. He scored 37 points against Michigan State. He put 30 up on Virginia. He's averaging -- averaging! -- 26.1 points, 9.2 assists, and 4.3 rebounds per game. He records an assist on 48.4 percent of his possessions; only Providence's Kris Dunn is better. He draws a Ben Simmons-esque 7.0 fouls per 40 minutes. And he plays 37.7 minutes per game, uses 32.5 percent of Oakland's possessions and takes 30.4 percent of its shots. And he's efficient while doing so. He is the type of player on which the most lasting tournament cliche -- guards win in March -- was built. But for Oakland and Felder to put that fear into their first-round opponent, they have to get there. See where this is going? The Horizon League is not a two-bid affair in 2015-16. The conference tournament will decide whether that team is Valpo or Oakland (or someone else entirely). The Horizon League's conference tournament is staged at team sites, based on conference record. (Update: The Horizon League is actually switching its tournament format beginning this season. Instead of its traditional home hosting, the league will host a neutral-court tournament in Detroit. Regular-season record doesn't matter quite as much as the earlier version of this post stated, but still. It matters. We regret the error.) Which makes Friday night's game more than a glimpse at two of the best potential March underdogs in the sport, but a potentially deciding factor in which one of them will get that opportunity in the end. It shouldn't be missed. UCLA is a weird team. On Thursday, the Bruins beat Arizona at home, which adds to their collection of impressive victories over Kentucky and at Gonzaga. Last weekend, UCLA lost back-to-back games at Washington and Washington State, the latter of which featured a 1.18 points-per-trip performance from the previously 8-5 Cougars. There was also that loss to Monmouth at home, and to Wake Forest on a neutral court. None of this makes any sense. The only thing we can say for sure is that Bryce Alford's walk-off game-winning 3 Thursday against the Wildcats -- just a few feet in front of UCLA alum and NBA star Russell Westbrook -- might have been the single swaggiest moment any Bruin has had in years. Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens took a leave from his team to visit his former player, Butler alum Andrew Smith, as Smith's fight against non-Hodgkins lymphoma reportedly took another turn for the worse. The Smith family is asking for your thoughts and prayers. A look back at Dylan Ennis' brutally brief final college hoops season -- ended thanks to a preseason foot injury that Ennis never quite got fixed -- from Rush the Court. So, you know that high school coach that head-butted (or shoved, or head-shoved, maybe) a referree and went viral earlier this week? That's Ryan Arcidiacono's high school coach. Interesting stuff from Purdue coach Matt Painter on elite freshman Caleb Swanigan gradually figuring out how to use his game against Big Ten opponents, and how difficult that process is for even the greats, like Purdue legend Glenn Robinson.
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