Which of the 6 Cinderella-ish teams in the Sweet 16 have the best Final Four shot?

The NCAA tournament has an awesome problem: Cinderellas have been earning invitations to the Final Four so often it’s tough to compare them to the famously-shunned peasant girl who won over a kingdom.

A team seeded seventh or higher has advanced to the national semifinals in each of the last five years. Extend that to seven years and you’ll find an 11-seed VCU taking on eighth-seed Butler for the chance to play in the national championship. Those teams in the seven- to 11-seed realm — eight since 2011 — have escaped their labels as Cinderellas; now they’re just Cinderella-ish.

In 2018, six of these teams are still standing as the Sweet 16 looms. Loyola-Chicago has earned the adulation of a nation behind their 98-year-old chaplain and a pair of bonkers buzzer-beaters. Nevada’s comeback over Cincinnati was so epic it created its own meme. Syracuse went from “how did they even get in” to “oh, God, this again” by grinding opponents into dust with a crushing defense. The Orange are joined by Texas A&M, Florida State, and Kansas State as high-major teams catching on at just the right time.

There’s a certain blueprint these underseeded teams need to follow to advance to the hardwood holy land. A look at the last 20 Final Four teams shows teams have to be proficient in two of three areas; shooting efficiently, creating a significant turnover gap, and providing solid defense all the way to the perimeter. A statistical breakdown shows just how strong last five years of title contenders has been. Bear with me, because there’s a big table incoming. Starred teams are ones seeded seventh or higher.

And here’s how this year’s crop of underdogs compares:

So what are those three things a team needs to blaze a trail to the Final Four?

In the past five years, only four of the 20 Final Four teams had committed more turnovers than they forced over the course of a season. While ball protection isn’t paramount — every team besides a notoriously protective Wisconsin team committed at least 10 turnovers per game — creating chaos has been an important part in creating extra opportunities and generating bonus points. South Carolina even proved this could offset wretched shooting, as a Gamecocks team that made just 42 percent of its field goals still managed to make a surprise Final Four run thanks to a defense that forced 632 turnovers last year.

The five-year average turnover differential for Final Four teams is 67, or roughly two more turnovers forced per game than committed. Among this year’s Cinderella-ishes, Nevada and Kansas State stand out. The Wolf Pack are the most turnover-averse team among the group, ranking fourth in the nation with just 9.6 TOs per game. That’s led to a +111 differential — good for about three extra possessions per game.

The Wildcats weren’t as good at protecting the ball thanks to a Big 12 filled with elite defenses, but K-State’s ability to fluster opponents (14.4 turnovers forced per game) has led to a +95 mark — firmly in the realm of recent Final Four contenders.

Texas A&M, on the other hand, looks awful through this metric. The Aggies’ -90 mark would be by far the worst among Final Four teams since 2013 should they win their next two games.

And then there’s Syracuse, whose slow pace and lack of scoring in its last two Final Four runs proved a smothering defense can cancel out otherwise fatal flaws. The Orange posted below-average shooting splits in 2016 and 2013 and still managed to make surprising runs to Jim Boeheim’s happy place in the national semifinals. In ‘16, they even managed to overcome the worst turnover differential of any Final Four team (-51) to ruin everyone’s brackets thanks to stifling perimeter defense (opponents shot just 30.7 percent from three) and an even 300 steals on the season.

Yes, the Orange averaged 7.5 steals per game that year and still committed more turnovers than their opponents. Syracuse’s offense was baaaaaaad.

And it’s still baaaaaaad in 2018, but that Syracuse defense is no joke. Opponents have shot just 39.6 percent from the field against them this season, turning contenders into entire rosters of Jonny Flynn-style chuckers. Boeheim’s team is also getting more blocks (196) than all but one other team among its Sweet 16 cohort.

That would be Texas A&M, who doesn’t generate many turnovers but still plays suffocating defense inside and out. Robert Williams, Tyler Davis, and Tonny Trocha-Morelos are all shot-erasing big men who have held opponents to 40.2 percent shooting. Pair that group with a solid perimeter defense that’s limited foes to 31.9 percent from long range, and you’ve got two strong indicators for second weekend success. Both those numbers slightly above averages for recent Final Four teams.

The defensive splits aren’t especially kind to Nevada, but in actuality none of these teams are significantly below average when it comes to perimeter defense. Loyola’s lack of big man defense (2.45 blocks per game, 297th in Division I) could come back to bite it here.

The least essential of the three categories, but still an important one. A hot hand can carry an underdog throughout March, and that’s something we’ve seen repeatedly in the NCAA tournament. The last 20 Final Four teams have shot ~46 percent from the field and ~36 percent from long range. For teams that fit the Cinderella-ish definition, those numbers drop to 44 percent overall, hampered by the aforementioned subpar offenses from ‘Cuse and South Carolina.

The titan among Sweet 16’s low-seeded teams in this metric is Loyola, who has feasted against a semi-soft schedule en route to the nation’s third-highest shooting percentage at 50.6 percent (against, according to Ken Pomeroy, Division I’s 77th-toughest schedule of defensive teams). The Ramblers are less efficient from three-point range (41.6 percent), so the onus of a Final Four bid will be on their play in the paint — which might not be a great assignment for a team with just one rotation player taller than 6’6 on the roster.

The king among three-point shooters is Nevada, who has made 42 percent of its attempts and made more threes than all but 14 other teams in the nation. Three different players are shooting 40 percent or better from behind the arc, the kind of depth that allows for 22-point second half comebacks.

Shooting stats don’t favor Syracuse (surprise!) or Texas A&M, but at least the Aggies are a standard deviation away from the Final Four average.

So who looks best? Nevada, despite its penchant for falling behind early, has the statistical profile most likely to fit a Final Four team among this year’s group of underdogs. Those numbers are inflated by playing against the Mountain West and not a pressure cooker like the Big 12 or ACC, but they’re still an encouraging sign — even if the Wolf Pack’s tendency to fall behind early in big games isn’t especially comforting.

Kansas State could use better shooting and perimeter defense, but the Wildcats’ ability to generate turnovers should keep them in their next game (and beyond) despite a relatively untested path to the Sweet 16. Loyola will have to shoot its way to the Final Four, while Texas A&M has to protect the ball to let its bigs feast. Syracuse has proven it has the chops to ugly its way to college basketball’s last weekend. Florida State isn’t especially bad or good in any of these categories, making them just average enough among its group to avoid getting called out until just now.

All in all, stats and recent trends say Nevada — but don’t sleep on a high-major outplaying its seed to crash the Final Four. After all, all but two of those six Cinderella-ish teams from the past five semifinals have come from Power 5 conferences, and one of those was UConn, who was just a year removed from membership in the Big East.