The Bilastrator's Early Season Mid-Major All-America Team

• Isaiah Stevens, Colorado State

• Xaivian Lee, Princeton

• Tyon Grant-Foster, Grand Canyon

• Xavier Johnson, Southern Illinois

• Johnell Davis, Florida Atlantic

Which team will surprise us all by March?

Gasaway: If it's possible for a team to surprise us two years in a row, Princeton is about to do so. The Tigers will greet Selection Sunday with zero Quad 1 wins after having played a schedule that included only one major-conference opponent (Rutgers). No one will be talking about Mitch Henderson's group except to say that they "haven't played anybody." But Xaivian Lee and Caden Pierce can play.

Dickie V's elite 8 mid-majors to watch

Princeton Tigers, Ivy League

The Tigers are sitting solidly in the top 30 NET rankings with a 12-1 nonconference record (and 1-0 in Ivy League play) and three Quad 2 wins. The Tigers, who made a Sweet 16 run last year, are looking to make back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances for the first time since doing three straight from 1996 to 1998. Princeton's 9-0 start this season is also its best in more than 100 years.

The Princeton Tigers are rolling along, sporting a 13-1 overall record and a sub-30 NET. They won their Ivy League opener by 31 points over Harvard and will be the betting favorite in all 13 of their remaining regular-season games. They don't and won't have a Q1 win, but they have four in Q2 as well as six true road victories. Their only loss (at Saint Joseph's) sits in Q1 currently. Conceivably, the Tigers could be 27-1 or thereabouts heading into the Ivy League championship game on Selection Sunday. What would the committee do if Princeton drops that last game? Could the Ivy League really be a two-bid league? The answer from this seat is clearly "yes." And the uniqueness of it all is worth watching and even rooting for.

Princeton Tigers
Up until late January, Princeton was looking absolutely ideal on paper, and talk of a potential two-bid Ivy was beginning to gain traction. Then the Tigers dropped road games by 15 at Cornell and by six at Yale, and now the picture has been altered dramatically. Mitch Henderson's team dropped more than 20 spots in the NET rankings in the space of a few days. Perhaps there's still a glimmer of at-large hope for a 16-3 team that might crack the top-50 in this or that metric, but the more promising path to the field of 68 for the Tigers is likely to be winning the Ivy's automatic bid.

Princeton Tigers
While the Ivy's top-to-bottom strength is similar to what we've seen before in its best showings (including 2022-23), this could mark the first season the league produces three top-100 KenPom teams. Princeton is the strongest of the three, according to KenPom, though Mitch Henderson's 17-3 team is in third place in the league standings, behind Yale and Cornell. Nevertheless, the Tigers are hanging around Bubble Watch because if they do string together enough wins for this question to be raised, their team sheet numbers won't doom their chances. Those numbers are already strong.

PRINCETON TIGERS
The safest path to the field of 68 for any member of a league that's 0-for-forever on at-large bids is to qualify automatically. At 19-3, Princeton's chances of winning the Ivy's automatic bid are significantly greater than the probability of earning an at-large invite. Still, in an effort to reach for that second lifeline in case it becomes necessary, the Tigers might wish to climb even a little higher in the NET rankings and surface in the 40s. (Winning by 11 at home against Yale was a start.) That, plus the committee's memory of Princeton's 2023 Sweet 16 run and, ideally, a collapse among some bubble rivals, could at least give the Tigers a shot.