Every year around this time hoopologists love to saturate the internet with projections about the NCAA basketball tournament field.
Who's in? Who has work to do? What are the projected matchups?
It's glorious clickbait for the insatiable college basketball fan, of which I am one.
But while I respect my fellow sports hacks for the work they do, I am a little curious why USF gets little or no love for the kind of season the Bulls are putting together. The Bulls play a tremendously entertaining brand of basketball and they're currently tied for first in the American Conference..
Co-leader Tulsa has lost only four games this season, and two of them have been to the Bulls.
Yet, USF is largely left out of any March Madness chatter. The computers don't seem to like the Bulls much either. They improved by just one place in the NET rankings to No. 64 after beating Tulsa, while the Golden Hurricane is 47th.
It should be noted that the Bulls' NET ranking this season is the highest in program history.
The KenPom site ranks the Bulls 65th, their highest since 2012. That's also the last time USF went to the NCAA tournament.
Despite that, USF will likely have to win the conference tournament to receive an invitation to the Big Dance,
Only 10 of the American's 13 teams will be in the tournament -- the bottom three squads can start their vacations (or coaching changes) a little early.
If USF can maintain its position as one of the top two teams in the standings, the Bulls would receive a bye all the way to the semifinals.
Four of the Bulls' eight losses are by a combined nine points, including three in the conference by five total points. We can think about what might have been had USF prevailed in those games -- two of the conference losses were at home -- but that's really where the trouble lies.
The conference losses to UAB (125th in the NET), Wichita State (87th) and Temple (146th) are killers. A four-point loss to George Washington (92nd) doesn't help either.
The win over Utah State (25th) was a good resume builder, but those other losses to inferior teams are dragging the Bulls down.
They've got two games with Memphis left, but even sweeping those won't impress the NET. The Tigers are having a mediocre season and sit at 103rd in the NET.
The Bulls have seven regular-season games left and can finish with 23 wins heading into the conference tournament. That would be the same number of regular-season wins they had two seasons ago under Amir Abdur-Rahim, but they knew they had to win the tournament to get invited to the Madness.
It looks like the same situation this year. I will say this, though -- if the Bulls do make the Big Dance, it would probably be as a No. 12 seed, and I wouldn't want to be the No. 5 seed that would see the letters USF in their bracket.
"We want to play fast and be efficient. I'll tell you what, it's really hard to guard. We catch teams; they're doing transition defense drills all week," head coach Bryan Hodgson said.
"You can't prepare for what we do, because we've been doing it since last spring. And so you can't just, on a four-day prep, prepare for the way we're going to play. It's tough for opposing defenses."