There's plenty of time for seeding fortunes to be swung.
Even at this late juncture in the season, the range of seeding possibilities for midtier teams remains so vast that today we'll identify see-saw squads that could still end up as pesky Giant Killers or vulnerable Giants, depending on how each team's final stretch shakes out.
According to our BPI projections, teams such as Oklahoma (which John Gasaway covered last week) have at least a 1 percent chance of landing anywhere between a 4-seed and 12-seed. That's quite the spread.
And it presents an interesting quirk to the end of the college basketball season. If there's a team out there that you know you'll want to pick above expectation in March Madness, then you don't want that team to win too much now. That would bloat the team's seed, and all of a sudden, your pesky 7-seed is a trendy 4-seed the entire world has advancing to the second weekend of the tournament.
So beyond Oklahoma, let's dive into a few of the teams threading the thin needle between Giant and Giant Killer.
Nevada Wolf Pack
Current Bracketology seed: 7
BPI projected seed: 5.8
Chance to earn No. 5-seed or better: 46 percent
Chance to earn No. 7-seed or worse: 25 percent
It's easy to see why the range of outcomes is so broad for Nevada. The Wolf Pack are favored by BPI in every remaining regular-season game and are the favorites to win the Mountain West (42 percent) conference tournament, so it's possible they finish the season on quite a run. But their remaining slate can pretty easily take a turn for the worse, too. Though the favorites in their remaining contests, they have less than a 61 percent chance to win three of them. Most notably, they essentially have a coin-flip game at Boise State on Feb. 14.
If Nevada does hit a few speed bumps and drops down to, say, a 7-seed, the Wolf Pack would instantly become strong candidates to take down a 2-seed in the second round. In a matchup against a current Bracketology 2-seed, Auburn, our Giant Killers model would give Nevada a 47 percent chance to win, boosted by a GK Factor of 6 percent thanks to a significant advantage in 3-point shooting. The Wolf Pack are shooting 40.5 percent from beyond the arc, per KenPom, which is 16th best in Division I. Senior guard Kendall Stephens and junior forward Caleb Martin lead the downtown shooting effort; each shoots at least 43 percent from 3-point range and takes at least six 3s per game.
Gonzaga Bulldogs
Current Bracketology seed: 6
BPI projected seed: 6.6
Chance to earn No. 5-seed or better: 23 percent
Chance to earn No. 7-seed or better: 48 percent
Upset fiends can go ahead and pencil Gonzaga into the Sweet 16 right now. Despite being the No. 9-ranked team in BPI, the Bulldogs are staring at being second-round underdogs (seedwise) because they have underperformed (recordwise) relative to their skill. In other words: Four losses for a team with Gonzaga's schedule (111th-most difficult, per BPI) is awfully costly to a résumé, but the entire body of the Bulldogs' work (including the fact that three of those four losses came by six points or fewer) indicates they are better than their strength of record would suggest.
The reality is that Mark Few has his team playing at an almost Elite Eight level despite losing so much talent from last season's run to the title game.
If you're hoping Gonzaga's stock stays low into March, a loss against Saint Mary's both on Feb. 10 and perhaps again in the WCC tournament would go a long way to hiding the Bulldogs' true strength. Two wins over the Gaels might push Gonzaga up to true Giant status and sap their value when it's bracket-picking time.
If the Bulldogs do enter the tournament as a 6-seed, they appear to be relatively safe first-round Giants. USC and Providence, currently projected 11-seeds, would have only a 26 percent and 21 percent chance against Gonzaga, respectively, per our Giant Killers model.
Seton Hall Pirates
Current Bracketology seed: 6
BPI projected seed: 5.2
Chance to earn No. 5-seed or better: 66 percent
Chance to earn No. 7-seed or worse: 17 percent
Even though their most recent 3-4 stretch included brutally tough opponents such as Villanova and Xavier, the Pirates' projected seed still has dropped by about 1.3 lines. If they fall all the way to (second-round) Giant Killer territory, that would be the result of a pretty disappointing second half of the season.
The two most critical regular-season games for the Pirates are vs. Marquette on Wednesday and vs. Butler on March 3. In both cases the Pirates are favored (77 percent and 65 percent chance to win, respectively) but still could lose, and there's more than a full seed line of leverage at stake depending on each result.
Assuming Seton Hall can hang on and remain a Giant, the Pirates look like prime candidates to be bounced in the first round. If they moved up to a 5-seed, they would have only a 62 percent and 55 percent chance to beat current No. 12 seeds Louisiana and Virginia Tech, respectively.