NCAA Tournament: No. 8 Kansas State vs. No. 9 Southern Miss GameThread

Assuming the Syracuse Orange defeat the UNC-Asheville Bulldogs later today, they'll play the winner of the Kansas St. Wildcats - Southern Miss. Golden Eagles game this afternoon.

The game is set for 12:40 EST and will air on truTV.

The folks at Bring On The Cats don't seem too scared about the Eagles, who might be a bit overrated here:

As noted by Joe Lunardi, this is one of those teams with a way-too-high RPI (No. 21 RealTime RPI) even though they didn't really have a great year. The key was probably scheduling 5 road games and 3 neutral court games in the nonconference, even though most of those were against mediocre to bad opponents (they did lose at Denver).

It does seem that K-State struggles most against teams with good big men or especially big, athletic small forwards, and USM doesn't really fit that bill. They're undersized and don't have any standout players, with 5-11 guard Neil Watson (from KCK and best friend of Will Spradling) leading the way in scoring at 12.2 points per game, which earned him Sixth Man of the Year honors.

Word on the street is that KSU can give us a run for our money thanks to their aggresive play and dominant rebounding effort. Let's see just how worried we should be...

Leave your pre-, in- and post-game comments below.