SOURCE: Las Vegas Sun

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“Now a lot of other schools can get quality players. It’s really leveling off.”

Teams such as Xavier and Notre Dame, not typically noted as national basketball powerhouses, could make noise in March, D’Amico said. The same goes for Davidson and Gonzaga of the unheralded Southern and West Coast conferences.

“I don’t want to call them smaller conferences or lesser-known conferences anymore, because it seems like they’re all about equally known now,” D’Amico said.

They’re particularly known among gamblers, who have to be aware that even teams with poor straight-up records such as Louisiana-Lafayette and Louisiana Tech have been covering the point spread at profitable rates this season.

Just as bettors can establish a good case for about eight NBA teams to win the title — instead of the usual three or four that essentially leave the field behind by this point in the season — they also could make an argument for more than a handful of college teams to win the tournament.

Still, the top two leagues look to be the Pac-10 and the Atlantic Coast Conference, thanks largely to UCLA (No. 2 in the LVSC poll), North Carolina (No. 3), Duke (No. 5), Stanford (No. 9), Washington State (No. 10) and Clemson (No. 12).

“UCLA looks strong, and most people didn’t think Stanford would be as strong as they are,” D’Amico said. “And if you asked me before the season where Washington State would be, I wouldn’t have said the Top 10.”

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