In an NCAA tournament full of surprises, here's one more Shocker: Wichita State is the best Giant Killer to make a deep run in the tourney since we've been tracking underdogs, and maybe the best since Villanova won a miracle championship in 1985.
Entering the Big Dance, Wichita State was underappreciated by everyone except Kansans and statheads, landing a 9-seed despite ranking 24th in the country in BPI. That kind of gap isn't particularly unusual. Just about every year, the tournament committee lowballs a few teams with outstanding statistics, and over the past decade, 25 teams ranking in Ken Pomeroy's top 25 have ended up seeded ninth or lower.
But it usually spells doom: Even analytics favorites find it hard to overcome the strong opposition low seeds have to face. Since the dawn of the modern spreadsheets era in 2003, only two teams have worked their way from the bottom half of their brackets into the Final Four: George Mason in 2006 and VCU in 2011.
Now, take those George Mason and VCU teams, and add 8-seed Butler from 2011 to the mix, because the Bulldogs made it all the way to the national championship game, and consider this: Wichita State is stronger than all of them.
The Shockers have more wins (30) and have played in a tougher conference than any of those Cinderellas. And Wichita State has outscored opponents by 21.1 points this season, after adjusting for the strength of its opponents, versus 20 for the '06 Patriots, 16.6 for the '11 Bulldogs and 15 for the '11 Rams.
The only other team seeded ninth or lower to make it to a Final Four was LSU in 1986. The Tigers, notable for their "freak" defense, survived an outbreak of chicken pox and somehow landed two home games in the NCAA tournament as an 11-seed. They were a fun bunch who could put up bunches of points, and a legitimate top-25 team. That era is beyond the range of our statistical model, so we'll just have to say you need to go back at least that far to find a deep underdog as good as Wichita State who was still alive in the third weekend of the tournament.
And the Shockers aren't just a good team; they're strong in precisely the areas where Killers need to excel to knock off Giants. Wichita State grabs a ton of offensive rebounds (38 percent of missed shots, ranking 18th in the NCAA), and generates turnovers in the best way, via steals (11.5 percent of opponent possessions, ranking 54th). The Shockers put all those extra possessions to good use by taking a lot of outside shots, and in their two giant killings in this tournament, they hit 45.8 percent of their 3s (22-of-48). And they hew to a slow pace, limiting opponents' chances for comebacks, as Ohio State learned to its chagrin.
We have explored this winning formula in some detail before. But we're wondering, after spending so many keystrokes pining for the likes of Belmont and Iowa State, if maybe we haven't quite given Wichita State its full due. So let's be clear: When you add the Shockers' "secret sauce" -- our estimate of how much they gain against Giants from playing like successful Killers from the past -- to their fundamental strength, they rank as one of the 10 strongest Giant Killers of the past several seasons in our spreadsheets:
For purposes of comparison, VCU in 2011 had a GK Rating of 35.4, thanks to a whopping secret sauce of 10.6, and Butler in 2011 was at 33.5 (secret sauce: 3.1).
But the Shockers have been playing much better than even these numbers would have predicted. In the NCAA tournament, Wichita State has maintained a very high level of efficiency on both ends, scoring 109.7 points per 100 possessions and giving up only 89.9, against very tough competition. To see just how crazy good the results have been, we can return to the method that ranked Georgetown as the worst Giant of all time, where we compared actual outcomes to projected margins based on teams' scoring statistics. In crushing Pitt 73-55, Wichita State exceeded expectations by a whopping 36 points per 100 possessions. And against Gonzaga, the Shockers performed even better relative to statistical estimates, recording the eighth-biggest upset since 2006-07:
If you're wondering where Florida Gulf Coast is on this list, the Eagles just missed the cut: FGCU's demolition of Georgetown exceeded expectations by 32.0 points, and its win over San Diego State clocks in at 30.0 points better than expected. Wichita State's further wins over La Salle (plus-17.7) and Ohio State (plus-14.5), while not record-setting, were also extremely impressive.
Now, in a sample of just a few tournament games, we can't tell exactly where this overperformance comes from. It could be the result of opponents playing poorly, or of stylistic matchups favoring the Shockers -- though those are tough arguments to make, because Wichita State has just beaten three of the top 15 teams in the nation, all with different strengths. It could simply be luck.
But there's also some strategy at work here. For one thing, Wichita State took 43 percent of its shots from behind the 3-point arc against Pitt, Gonzaga and Ohio State, way up from around 35 percent in the regular season. For another, Gregg Marshall has upped the minutes he's giving to Fred Van Vleet. The freshman guard generates oodles of steals (3.5 percent of opponent possessions) and is the Shockers' best 3-point shooter (42.6 percent), and he played 20 minutes against Gonzaga and 24 against Ohio State, versus his regular-season average of 16 per game. It looks like Wichita State has amped up the giant-killing aspects of its play without sacrificing its overall effectiveness, just as VCU did in 2011.
With pressure-crazy Louisville up next, the Shockers, who turn the ball over on one of every five possessions, are going to need every last Goliath-tripping trick in their bag to make it to the national championship game. But for the moment, Wichita State is the best deep underdog ever to make it to the Final Four, turbocharged with giant-killing qualities, balling over its head and purposefully so. The only shock now will be if this team doesn't play well in Atlanta.