For once in your life, don’t wait until the last minute. Don’t put off the inevitable. Don’t cram. Instead of spending the days after Selection Sunday feverishly trying to learn all you can about small schools whose mere existence might surprise you, start boning up now. There are more games televised than ever before, more data readily available and more Giant Killers, baby.
For the next month, we’ll guide you by the hand through the wilderness of mid-major hoops so that by the time the bracket is set, you can break down the differences between St. Francis (N.Y.) and St. Francis (Pa.).
To start your training, we offer up five of the top potential Giant Killers currently hiding outside of the power conferences. As always, their GK Rating is expressed on a 100-point scale representing their likelihood of upsetting an average Giant. Time to study up.
GK rating: 36.8
The Lumberjacks upset VCU in the first round (yes -- the NCAA will finally start referring to it by its rightful name next year) as a 12-seed last season. This season, they’re even better. They’re ranked 35th on KenPom.com (they were 59th entering the tourney last season), sport a 20-3 record and are undefeated in the Southland Conference. Yet, Joe Lunardi projects them as just a 12-seed again. That would be a dramatic underseeding, which would make them an even stronger Giant Killer than a typical squad on the 12 line.
But the Lumberjacks aren’t just a good team. They’re also armed with all sorts of preferred Giant-Killing weapons. The Lumberjacks are masters of generating extra chances, as they force turnovers on 26.2 percent of opponents’ possessions (third nationally) and grab offensive rebounds on 38.1 percent of their misses (14th). They fire up 3-pointers on 36.6 percent of their field goal attempts and, led by Jacob Parker (45.3 percent), they hit them at a 35.4 percent clip, which is better than the national average.
About the only fault you can find in Stephen F. Austin, from a GK perspective, is a tempo that isn’t as slow as a season ago. The Lumberjacks are now around average, at 65.8 possessions per game. But they have a lot of ways to win, with a squad that goes 11 deep, the rim-attacking style of Thomas Walkup (14.2 PPG), the playmaking of Trey Pinkney (5.6 APG in conference games) and the group rebounding effort that compensates for a roster with only one player taller than 6-foot-7.
SFA started slowly against strong teams, with a two-point home loss to Northern Iowa, followed by double-digit road losses to Xavier and Baylor. But they went on to win at Memphis, and have since rolled through the Southland. Get to know them now; thank us later.
GK rating: 27.4
Do you like to have fun? If so, hop on the bandwagon we’ve been trying to start for this team since 2013, and start rooting for Eastern Kentucky to win the OVC title. Overall, the Colonels are a middling squad, chugging along at 15-9. But their approach to basketball is anything but generic, and it makes them a dangerous Killer.
On defense, Eastern Kentucky pressures the ball all over the court to create turnovers on 27.5 percent of opponents’ possessions, second in the country. And after the Colonels swipe the ball, they generally launch it from deep, as 47.2 percent of their shots come from 3-point range. Corey Walden (18.9 PPG) has attempted 109 treys in 24 games (and he's hit 33.9 percent of them), while Timmy Knipp (10.7 PPG) takes almost six 3’s per night (and makes 38.5 percent).
Granted, the Colonels grab a rebound about as often as Charles Barkley attends the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, but their high-risk, high-reward approach is exactly what you want from a Giant Killer. And it shows in their results against top teams. Sure, they got walloped by 33 points at Kentucky, and fell by 14 at BYU. But they also clobbered Miami by 28 points on the road, a game in which Eastern Kentucky shot 14-for-26 from deep and forced 14 turnovers. And Wednesday night, with first place in the OVC East on the line, they pocketed another 20 turnovers, overcoming a Morehead State squad built to dominate the boards. You know what you call that, boys and girls? Fun.
GK rating: 18.8
The Chippewas are like a saner version of Eastern Kentucky -- at least on offense. They’re even more trey-happy than the Colonels, hoisting 3s on 48.6 percent of their attempts. But they support that deep-shooting habit with all kinds of efficiency. Central Michigan rarely turns the ball over (15.7 percent of possessions, 15th in the nation) hits 38.2 percent of those 3s and connects at a high rate from inside the arc, too (53.7 percent 2-point shooting, 18th nationally). Add it all up, and you have the 44th-ranked team in adjusted offensive efficiency (109.5 points per 100 possessions).
Defense is a problem, though. They rank 179th in adjusted efficiency (102.2) and only force turnovers at an average rate. They excel on the defensive glass, ranking 38th in the nation, but that stat doesn’t correlate with Giant-Killing success. If the Chippewas are going to beat you, they’ll do it by outscoring you -- mainly from deep. And while that strategy is indeed risky, they have a bit of a cushion: Eight players have hit at least 10 treys this season, so even if a couple of guys go cold, others can pick up the slack. John Simons has been particularly deadly, averaging 2.6 made 3’s at a 44.3 percent clip, and it would be interesting to see Austin Stewart let it fly more often, since he has hit 14 of 22 attempts.
With point guard Chris Fowler orchestrating the offense (6.1 APG) and scoring in a variety of ways (15.4 PPG), this is an outfit that can challenge a top team. At least we think so. We really have no idea what the Chippewas will look like against a top dog, due to a monumentally pathetic non-conference schedule that featured the likes of Alma, Concordia and Central Pennsylvania. If they can find a way to win the tightly bunched MAC, though, we’ll finally find out.
GK rating: 17.3
Northern Iowa and Wichita State have dominated the Missouri Valley Conference, and both are NCAA tourney locks. But don’t sleep on the Redbirds, even though they are 7-6 in league play and will have to win the MVC tourney to reach the Big Dance. The Redbirds beat Old Dominion -- another strong potential Giant Killer -- by 19 back in November, lost to Seton Hall and VCU by four points each in nonconference games, and took Northern Iowa to the wire before losing by a point last month.
Illinois State does it with defense. The Redbirds rank 49th in adjusted efficiency (93 points per 100 possessions) through two main strengths: They force turnovers (21.8 percent of opponents’ possessions) and clean up the defensive glass (opponents grab just 28 percent of available offensive rebounds). The former is a key Giant-Killing trait, as we’ve mentioned, and the latter doesn’t factor into our “Secret Sauce,” but it does negate a typical strength of a safe Giant -- offensive rebounding. And while the Redbirds struggle to score (103.6 points per 100 possessions), they create second and third chances through their offensive rebounding (38 percent). You can thank 6-10, 257-pound Reggie Lynch for much of that dirty work, as his 14.2 percent offensive rebounding rate ranks 32nd in the country.
While the Redbirds don’t shoot a lot of 3s, the combo of Daishon Knight (41 percent) and Bobby Hunter (43.6 percent) offers coach Dan Muller the opportunity to shift his strategy against a better foe, not unlike what Harvard has done in the past two NCAA tournaments.
GK rating: 16.5
If our model could write heartfelt letters, it would send a valentine to Gary Waters. The Cleveland State coach has routinely produced GK-worthy squads, and this season's group is no different. The Vikings have rebounded from a 6-8 non-conference start to go 9-2 in Horizon League play, and they’re doing it with a host of GK tricks.
The Vikings play at a slow pace. A really slow pace. As we’ve mentioned in the past, that limits the number of individual skirmishes they must win within a single game against a better team, and thus increases the chance of an upset. That tempo -- 61.8 possessions per game, 314th in the nation -- doesn’t mean the Vikings are conservative, though. In the time-honored tradition of Cedric Jackson, Norris Cole and D'Aundray Brown, the Vikings pressure the ball on D, coming up with steals on 12.3 percent of opponents’ possessions (18th in the nation). They reinforce those takeaways by protecting the ball on offense (18.3 percent turnover rate).
And while the Vikings only shoot 3-pointers slightly more often than the national average, they possess a pair of snipers who could increase their workload against a top foe, similar to what Illinois State might want to do. That duo of the aptly named Trey Lewis (16.6 PPG, 2.8 3pg, 42.6 3P%) and Charlie Lee (12.5 PPG, 1.8 3pg, 42.7 3P%) fuels a Vikings attack that also includes inside balance in 6-8 Anton Grady (13.6 PPG, 7.0 RPG). Part of the reason for Cleveland State’s slow start, in fact, was the absence of the 5-8 Lee (suspension) for the first six games of the season, which included losses to Iona, Savannah State and Louisville.
And say this for Cleveland State: They’re tested. They lost to Louisville 45-33 without Lee in a game where even a decent shooting performance (instead of their 13-for-52 effort) could have led to an upset. They lost at Virginia by 16 (not bad) and hung around before falling at VCU by nine. With a little better showing and the right opponent, the Vikings have the chops to take out the next ranked team they face -- say, in the opening round of the NCAA tournament.