Hansbrough (50) adeptly draws inside fouls and Singler likes long-range shots. Heinz Kluetmeier/SI

Yet more than ever the teams carrying a slingshot for Goliath aren't just double-digit seeds gunning for classic March upsets; they're also high-seeded powerhouses that have found innovative ways to mitigate their lack of stature. "When a team doesn't have a big man, everybody looks at the teams that do and says they automatically have an advantage, but I don't know if that's always the case," says Butler coach Brad Stevens, whose seventh-seeded Bulldogs have no player taller than 6' 8". "Often there's an advantage on one end of the court, but there may be a major disadvantage on the other."

How those relative Lilliputians attempt to defy nature -- and the conventional wisdom of basketball -- may well be the dominant story line of the next three weeks.

From a statistical perspective, size does matter in college basketball -- more so on defense than on offense, and more so at center and power forward than at small forward and guard. Ken Pomeroy, a stat guru for Basketball Prospectus, computed the average height for all 341 Division I teams and found a weak correlation with offensive efficiency (points scored per possession, adjusted for competition) and a slightly stronger one with defensive efficiency (points allowed per possession). But when he isolated what he called Effective Height -- the height of a team's center and power forward, i.e., the tallest 40% of a team's minutes played -- he found stronger correlations on offense and especially on defense, most of all in blocked shots, field-goal-percentage defense and defensive efficiency.

Pomeroy's conclusions: Having tall guards isn't that important, but there's ample reason for coaches to scour the world for exceptional big men -- Thabeet is Tanzanian, while 6' 11" Vanderbilt center A.J. Ogilvy is Australian -- or to invest time in a project such as Hibbert, whom former Georgetown coach John Thompson Jr. nicknamed the Big Stiff as a freshman before rechristening him Stiff No More.

That's good news for a few tall NCAA tournament teams: Georgetown, which has more frontcourt height than even North Carolina's 1993 outfit, the tallest champ in the last 20 years; Stanford, which is anchored by the Lopez twins; and UConn, which has seen Thabeet add offensive skills to his already formidable shot-blocking presence. Noting that Thabeet's scoring average has gone from 6.2 points last season to 10.4 this year, Calhoun says his center has become "a nightmare to play against because [defenses] have to double-team him, and when they give help, it opens up our perimeter players."

North Carolina coach Roy Williams is one of the game's leading proponents of pounding the ball inside; his 2005 champion Tar Heels scored more than half of their points that season from the two power positions, the most of any NCAA titlist in the last two decades. Williams argues that skilled post men are better at drawing fouls than are perimeter players -- witness Hansbrough, who leads the nation in free throw attempts (344) -- and that size matters more during the NCAA tournament because, he says, "it becomes more of a half-court game and people take fewer chances. Plus, in the NCAA tournament that three-foot shot doesn't have as much pressure on it as a 22-foot shot has."

Remember, though: Height has a greater impact on the defensive end. Ask Stanford coach Trent Johnson about the influence he expects from the Lopez twins on this year's tournament, and he talks about defense. "You'd think we'd be able to rebound and defend around the basket and challenge shots," Johnson says. "When Brook and Robin are both on the floor, there's no question it makes it tough for teams to attack the rim and shoot the five- or 10-footer."

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