ATLANTA — Georgia State will look to do the just-about-impossible this afternoon - win as a No. 16 seed over a No. 1 seed in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.
Standing in the Panthers' way will be Gonzaga, the No. 1 team in the country and tournament's No. 1 overall seed.
Piece of cake, right?
Diving into the numbers, you might say Georgia State has a chance, but regretfully it's probably more in the Lloyd Christmas sense.
Here's a breakdown of the factors that make pulling off the upset this afternoon a bit of an uphill climb for Georgia State:
Can Georgia State beat Gonzaga?
Well, nothing is impossible.
Let's start with the positive - as far as 16-seeds go, the Panthers are pretty decent!
Glancing at the rankings produced by Ken Pomeroy - generally considered the gold standard for analytical evaluations of college basketball teams - Georgia State rates as the 150th best team in the country out of all 358 Division 1 basketball programs.
That's not sterling, but it's better than fellow 16-seeds Norfolk State (168), Wright State (175) and Texas Southern (183).
It also compares favorably with the only team ever to pull off the 16-over-1 victory - UMBC (University of Maryland-Baltimore County), who beat Virginia in 2018. Heading into that tournament, UMBC was ranked 166th in the country by Pomeroy's formula.
That's the good news for the Panthers - now, the bad news: So far this season, they haven't beaten an opponent even remotely close to the quality of Gonzaga. Not even in the same galaxy, really.
And when they have played teams approaching that level, it's gone really ugly.
The Panthers played Mississippi State (49th in the Pomeroy rankings), Richmond (84th) and Rhode Island (135th) this season, and lost those games by 29, 35 and 16 points, respectively.
They managed to take Georgia Tech (164th) to overtime, but lost that game as well.
They also lost to Mercer (192) and Texas-Arlington (219).
Their three non-conference wins came against High Point (244), Northeastern (265) and William & Mary (341).
It is, to be frank, not an encouraging record heading into a meeting with the Zags, who went 26-3 and lost only to Duke, Alabama and Saint Mary's, all top-25 ranked teams.
But, here's the thing - something eventually clicked for the Panthers. After starting out 3-9 against D1 opposition, including an 0-3 start to conference play in the Sun Belt, the Panthers went 12-1 the rest of the way. They haven't lost a game since Feb. 3 (a four-point loss to Troy).
Corey Allen and Kane Williams will be the keys - they've weirdly struggled to put together a good game together. When one has been hot, the other has tended to be cold.
If they can both be at the top of their games, and if others in the Georgia State guard rotation including Justin Roberts, Nelson Phillips and Evan Johnson can contribute, they just might be able to give the Zags some trouble in the same way Alabama's guards did.
The Panthers are smaller, with 6-8 Eliel Nsoseme and 6-10 Jalen Thomas doing most of their work inside - not ideal against a Gonzaga team led by 6-10 Drew Timme and 7-0 Chet Holmgren.
But Georgia State did rank inside the top-50 in the NCAA in blocked shots per game, suggesting they can punch up a bit inside.
They'll need to in order to have any chance - the Zags, with their size, were sixth in the country in blocked shots and first in defensive rebounds.
Final verdict
It's pretty hard to build a case for the Panthers, but you know what they say - never say never.