You raise some great questions. Cal Poly, a down trodden team with many of the same players on its roster from a season or two ago went 8-4 in their last 12 regular season league games, and has now won 10 of 14. Something happened after they lost their first 8 straight league games. They are scoring a lot of points, yet play pretty poor defense. UCSD would be a lethal first round matchup for Cal Poly because they shoot the 3 ball equally as well and play far superior defense. If Cal Poly gets hot from the field and succeeds in forcing tempo on the Anteaters, the Mustangs have a very good chance of beating them.

This there's their turnaround. I have no inside knowledge of what happened up there to cause the turnaround. I would like to know what changed. For some reason, however, while Cal Poly got it together, LB fell apart, losing their last 15 straight. Sure, Cal Poly has better shooters, but they lack any size compared to LB. Is it offensive design? Player mix? Individual player skills? Coaching? Team chemistry? My answer would be YES. All of them. It's so hard to rebuild a mid-major from scratch, especially when the other conferences come poaching your players.