The great Giant Killer irony

There was nothing Denver could do. Even now, as Pioneers head coach Joe Scott looks back to last March, there is a tone of helplessness to his voice.

On the afternoon of March 14, Scott's Pioneers were positioned well to earn their first NCAA tournament berth. They entered the WAC tourney as the No. 2 seed, winners of eight straight and 17 of 18 and one of the 50 best teams in the country, according to KenPom.com. They were facing an 11-21 Texas State squad that ranked 250th.

Denver had swept the Bobcats by a combined 26 points in the regular season, but, on that night in Vegas, the dice seemed loaded. Possession after possession, Texas State would hold the ball, look to penetrate late in the shot clock, and throw up a floater or a runner or a pull-up with a hand in the shooter's face. And they almost all went in. The Bobcats would finish the game shooting 23-for-35; forward Joel Wright would go 9-for-10 from the field and 14-of-16 at the line.

"It'll even out," Scott would tell his troops during timeouts. "It will come back to the norm, and they'll miss."

But it never did. And just like that, Denver was done.

Back at Giant Killers Central, we took the loss hard. Our statistical model had identified Denver as one of the best potential Giant Killers (teams capable of pulling upsets in the NCAA tournament) in the country. The Pioneers had a rating of 51.8, meaning they would have entered the NCAA tourney with a better-than-average chance of knocking off a generic Giant. Their statistical profile was flush with hallmarks of traditional GKs: They took and made tons of 3-pointers (36.4 percent of their total points, 15th in the country); they were ball hawks (15.0 steal percentage, third in the nation); they held on to the ball (18.6 turnover percentage, 96th); and they did it all at a plodding pace (58.8 adjusted tempo, 346th).

The trouble with Denver, though, was one potential Giant Killers often struggle to overcome. We call it the double-edged slingshot. The very qualities that help produce NCAA tournament upsets also can prevent top underdogs from ever reaching a stage where they can display those abilities.

The reason? The likeliest Giant Killers generally reside at the top of their respective conferences (style of play isn't enough; you have to be good, too). And, when a squad has a personnel advantage, it is in its advantage to play a high-possession game (more skirmishes create more opportunities for an imbalance in talent to manifest itself) and a lower-risk, lower-reward style.

The best Giant Killers, however, try to maximize the number and value of their possessions by broadening the variance in their scoring, which is inherently risky. Hit the offensive glass and you can leave yourself vulnerable in transition. Press for turnovers and opponents might blow by you. Rely on treys and you will endure cold stretches when you miss low-percentage shots in bunches. Stop worrying about getting to the line and you might forget how to make foul shots when you need them.

Just look at what happened to Denver. Although Scott says his team no longer holds the ball, the stats say the Pioneers' Princeton-style offense still moves methodically. Combined with Texas State's stall-ball approach, that created a game with only 56 possessions. Similarly, Denver relies on steals for much of its defensive success, but it forced only six that night. As a result, conditions were just right for Texas State's hot shooting to carry the day.

Making matters worse for potential GKs is the fact that every conference except the Ivies rewards an automatic bid to its tournament winner, not its regular-season champ, and most don't even give conference championship byes to their first-place squads. That's why the excitement in our Killer-picking season actually peaks at the end of the first week of March, just before conference tournaments cull the assassins' herd.

Heading into conference tourneys this past winter, there were 10 auto-bid conferences in which the team with the best record was also the top potential Giant Killer and had at least a 10 percent chance of beating a generic Giant. So a tasty chance for NCAA upsets extended deep into the projected brackets, to the point that we asked, "Is this the year a men's No. 16 beats a No. 1?"

Well, it wasn't the year a No. 16 beat a No. 1, in part because teams such as Liberty (BPI: 262, GK Rating: 1.1) and James Madison (BPI: 186, GK Rating: 5.8) took No. 16 seeds, instead of Stony Brook (BPI: 80, GK Rating: 11.6) or Northeastern (BPI: 169, GK Rating: 14.0). And things didn't get much better upstream. Of those 10 regular-season leaders in auto-bid conferences, just half made it into the NCAA tournament. Moreover, in six mid-major leagues in which we identified strong Killers that could seize tournament bids by going on conference championship runs, none -- count 'em, zero -- did so.

The very best Killers, such as Wichita State last season or VCU in 2011, find ways to increase their efficiency as they adapt to various opponents and game situations. But many Giant Killers historically have had trouble replicating their success: In many cases, it's tough enough just to get back to the tournament. Ohio scored major upsets over Georgetown in 2010 and Michigan in 2012 under John Groce, employing a frenetic style based on pressure defense. But sandwiched in between was a 19-16 season and a MAC tournament loss to Ball State.

Richmond reached the Sweet 16 in 2011, knocking off fifth-seeded Vanderbilt in the process. But the Spiders, despite six straight winning seasons under Chris Mooney, have been to only one other NCAA tournament in that span. For a host of other programs, the story has been the same: hazardous to the health of big dogs but unable to conquer their own breed consistently.

Giant Killing can be so treacherous that a smaller-conference school might reasonably decide to focus on beating its regular-season opponents and gaining NCAA bids without worrying about how to strategize against stronger foes. Bucknell, which won 28 games last season before losing to Butler in its NCAA tourney opener, is a classic example.

On offense, the Bison protect the ball at all costs, abstain from 3-pointers and sacrifice offensive boards to prevent runouts. On defense, they forgo pressure to contain shooters and keep opponents off the glass. Last year, Bucknell ranked second in the NCAA in avoiding turnovers but 347th (dead last) in generating them, second in the nation in defensive rebounding percentage but 247th in offensive rebounding percentage. That's not kill-or-be-killed; it's more like avoid-killing-and-avoid-getting-killed.

The formula worked because Bucknell used its size (effective height: plus-2.5 inches, 36th in the NCAA, according to KenPom.com) to crush its weaker intra-conference opponents inside. (Bucknell ranked 59th in BPI; Lehigh was the next-best team in the Patriot League, at No. 107.) The Bison squeeze games like a sponge, draining away takeaways, second shots and bombs -- and then they're big enough and smart enough to execute better in the arid, risk-averse landscape that's left.

Of course, that's precisely the opposite of what Killers must do to beat Giants, and a stark contrast from the previous era of Bucknell basketball, as it was a steal-happy, trey-heaving squad that upset Kansas under Pat Flannery back in 2005. Today, instead of a slingshot, it's as if Bucknell uses a mace -- weaponry that can ward off lesser antagonists but isn't so effective against heavy armor.

Bucknell did earn a No. 11 seed last year. And the Pioneers, for sure, would gladly have traded places with the Bison. Still, history remembers the squads that rise up to conquer Giants in March, not the ones that simply dominate lesser foes en route to a round of 64 exit.

Denver has the ability to join that first group -- that is, if it ever gets that far.