Dayton beat Providence on Friday night going away, and with a classic Flyers performance: They moved the ball around and hoisted a lot of 3s (55 percent of attempts). They grabbed eight steals and forced turnovers on nearly a quarter of the Friars’ possessions. They harassed their opponent’s key scorers, holding LaDontae Henton and Kris Dunn to shooting just 23 percent (6-26). And they did it all while collecting just three offensive rebounds. It’s a style Dayton has evolved out of necessity. This season, the Flyers have lost players to transfer, ineligibility and suspensions, leaving them with just six scholarship athletes, and forcing them into an extremely undersized, guard-heavy lineup. It’s a very efficient but high-risk/high-reward formula -- exactly what Giant Killers need at this time of year. It’s also a lot of fun to watch.

Next up, Dayton faces Oklahoma, and our statistical model says the Flyers actually have a better shot on Sunday than they did on Friday, with upset odds of 30.1 percent. The Sooners, a significantly shorter team than Providence, are not built to take advantage of Dayton’s signature weakness: The Flyers’ offensive rebounding has crashed to 335th in the country, as they turn just 23.5 percent of missed shots into ORs, but Oklahoma ranks just 205th on the defensive boards.

The Sooners, however, are much tougher on opposing shooters, allowing them to hit on just 42.3 percent inside (ranking 17th) and 31 percent from downtown (ranking 32nd). Their defensive efficiency is easy to overlook because they play uptempo, but Oklahoma gives up just 89.8 points per 100 possessions (after adjusting for opponents), the seventh-best rate in the country. They have guards who can challenge the Flyers on the perimeter, react when Dayton tries to penetrate and then push the ball. Which means the key to this matchup is whether Dayton can keep imprinting its style on the game. Slow but aggressive is a tricky combo to continue pulling off, especially when you’re facing an opponent who will make you misfire for serious stretches of time, but it’s Dayton’s path to victory here. They need a low-possession game, and they need to keep shooting treys.

Dayton’s victory broke a 25-game winning streak for favorites, after Friday’s games turned this year’s tournament from an upset festival into the White Cliffs of Dover. The Flyers also secured a badly needed win for our model, whose favorite picks had fared pretty poorly to that point. Overall, our Best Bests went 1-6 in the round of 64, while teams we said were “Worth a Long Look” were 1-0, “Not Completely Crazy” picks were 1-8 and “Stay Away” teams were 1-9. (That last one, of course, was Georgia State. And as much as we like the Panthers, and think they could very well keep advancing, we still can’t believe that Baylor literally threw that game away.)

We do want to point out that in a very arid climate for Killers, there is value in avoiding sexy upset picks. Just a couple of days ago, Buffalo, Eastern Washington and Wofford were trending, and we told you to be skeptical. We correctly analyzed the patterns of how those teams, along with other underdogs like Harvard and New Mexico State, were likely to lose. And we recommended you look to the 11-line (which produced two upsets) instead of following the cliché about 12-5 games (which yielded none).

We noted a while ago that, given conference championship results, seedings and matchups, this didn’t look like a good year for underdogs, at least in the round of 64. (This weekend could be more exciting.) It turned out as badly as expected, and even worse for the Killers who seemed most promising. For the moment, Cinderella is still a Flyer (or a Panther). But this is one of those tournaments in which choosing the right Goliaths has had as much value as finding the best Davids.