Why South Dakota State is a potential 2022 NCAA tournament Cinderella

Record: 30-4
Conference: Summit League
Seed: 13
First Round Opponent: Providence (Thursday, 12:40 p.m. ET)
DraftKings Sportsbook odds: +60000 to win title, 3-point underdogs vs. Providence

There are three major things you need to know about this veteran South Dakota State team, which has now made three consecutive NCAA tournaments under three different head coaches:

1. They play one of the most fun styles in the country.

South Dakota State shoots 44.2 percent as a team from beyond the arc, easily the best mark of any team in the country. Patriot League champion Colgate is a distant second at 40.1 percent. They also average a whopping 86.7 points per game, the most of any team in the country not named Gonzaga.

2. It’s been a long, long time since they’ve tasted defeat.

SDSU owns the nation’s longest active winning streak and just became the first team in the history of the Summit League to run the table during the regular season and then win the conference tournament. Since losing to Missouri State all the way back on Dec. 15, South Dakota State has ripped off 21 consecutive victories. Thirteen of those 21 victories have come by 10 points or more.

3. They’re the Jackrabbits.

I mean, come on. We need Jackrabbits making March magic.

It was more than a little bit surprising to see South Dakota State pop up as a No. 13 seed on Selection Sunday instead of 12, but there’s still plenty of reason to believe the Jackrabbits are going to be winning at least one game in this tournament.

For starters, let’s look at their opponent.

Ordinarily, a matchup featuring the Big East’s regular season champion against an automatic qualifier from the Summit League would be a no-brainer, but this isn’t an ordinary 4/13 matchup.

Despite being No. 13 in latest AP top 25 poll, Providence is just No. 49 on Ken Pom and No. 32 in the NET Rankings. The predictive metrics in particular are non-believers in the Friars, mostly because they seem to have lived a bit of a charmed life over the last four months. Providence is a remarkable 15-2 in single-digit contests and 11-2 in games decided by five points or fewer.

Predictive metrics view close game results as mainly a function of random variance, not the sign of a veteran, clutch team that “finds a way to win” (or whatever your favorite cliche is. Those metrics have seen Providence as a ticking time bomb for months now, and those who believe in them weren’t exactly shocked to see the Friars get walloped by Creighton (85-58) in the Big East tournament semifinals last week.

In summary, there’s a good reason why Providence opened as just a 2-point favorite for this game. It’s also worth noting that the only two other times a No. 4 seed has been favored by fewer than three points (Dayton in 2003 and Vanderbilt in 2010) for a first round game, the No. 4 seed has gone on to lose that game.

The 2009-10 Murray State Racers.

While that Murray State team didn’t shoot it as well as this South Dakota State squad does, they were equally well-balanced, they could score tons of points in bunches, and they entered the tournament as a 13-seed with 30 wins after rolling through their conference.

Ultimately, that Murray State team took down Vanderbilt, 66-65, in an early Thursday afternoon thriller. That’s the same time window that this South Dakota State team will be taking on Providence.

The Racers would lose by just two in the second round to Butler, which would go all the way to the national championship game and come one shot away from taking down Duke.