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A little while ago, we found out officially that Scott Drew's Baylor Bears had broken the odd-numbered year curse to make the NCAA Tournament once again as a #3 seed in the West Region. The challenge before them will be tough with Wisconsin and Arizona as the 1 and 2 seeds, respectively, but we'll talk about that another time. Now, it's all Georgia State.
Opponent: Georgia State Panthers
Conference: Sun Belt
Head Coach: Ron Hunter, who tore his Achilles tendon during the celebration after the Panthers' win yesterday
Record: 24-9 (17-5)
KenPom Ranking: 71
RPI: 54
Full StatSheet Profile: Here
How They Got Here: By defeating Georgia Southern 38-36 (full game score) in the Sun Belt Championship yesterday.
Player to Watch: There are two:
- R.J. Hunter: 6-6 junior guard who averaged 19.8 points per game and made over 46% of the Panthers' threes this season.
- Ryan Harrow: 6-2 senior guard who averaged 19.4 points per game and made another quarter of the Panthers' threes this season.
The full team, courtesy of StatSheet.com:
So there you go. The game will be on Thursday at a time to be announced. So far, I haven't seen this be a trendy upset pick anywhere, nor should it be by all accounts.
UPDATE: This IS a trendy upset pick according to ESPN and USAToday. Interesting.