The Most Surprising Team in the 2014-15 College Basketball Season So Far

A lot of quality teams around the country are flying well below the radar.

Harvard, for instance, is 7-1 with a one-point loss on a neutral court to Holy Cross, but the Crimson didn't receive a single vote in the latest AP Top 25.

Cincinnati, California and Wyoming are other great examples of very good one-loss teams not getting any love.

But there's one team that sticks out like a sore thumb while getting less attention than the proverbial elephant in the room.

What I'm about to ask and subsequently attempt to affirm might get me sent to a room with padded walls. There's more than a decade's worth of empirical evidence to prove that it's not even a question worth considering, but here goes:

Could TCU make the 2015 NCAA tournament?

There are 10 undefeated teams remaining in the country.

Six of them (Kentucky, Duke, Arizona, Louisville, Virginia and Villanova) are ranked in the top seven. Two of them (Washington and Northern Iowa) cracked into the Top 25 for the first time this week and are gaining serious steam as contenders. Colorado State was a team that not many saw coming, but I had the Rams projected for a No. 9 seed before the season began.

Then there's TCU.

The 9-0 team that went 9-22 one year ago.

The bottom-feeding Horned Frogs that have gone 2-34 in Big 12 play since joining the conference before the 2012-13 season.

Here's the thing: Whether you want to believe in the Horned Frogs or not, it's almost a foregone conclusion that they will be 13-0 when Big 12 play begins. TCU's remaining nonconference schedule is made up of four home games against McNeese State, Texas-San Antonio, Grambling State and Tennessee State—teams that are a combined 3-18 against D-I opponents this season.

Rather than waiting until New Year's Day to ask how in the world this team could go seven weeks without a loss to find itself in first place in the Big 12, let's take a preemptive dive into what TCU is doing in order to make an educated guess at how many conference games the Horned Frogs could win this year.

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Weak Schedule

We might as well start out by addressing the first (and probably only) legitimate gripe that the naysayers have about TCU.

The Horned Frogs have played just about the weakest schedule in the entire country—and that doesn't even include the four upcoming cupcakes already addressed.

According to KenPom.com, TCU entered play on Wednesday with the 344th-most difficult schedule. Looking at that the other way, the Horned Frogs have had the eighth-easiest slate of games. Based on Pomeroy's ranks, four of TCU's nine games have come at home against teams ranked in the bottom 50 in the nation.

Rather than comparing the Horned Frogs' schedule to that of the Longhorns, though, let's compare and contrast against TCU's 2013-14 schedule to show how much this team has improved.

Last year, TCU's nonconference schedule was only marginally more challenging, ranking 331st in the nation, according to KenPom.com. Yet, the Horned Frogs entered conference play with three losses—including an especially brutal one at home against Longwood—and really didn't look impressive in any of those "easy" games.

Through December 15, TCU was 6-3 and had yet to win a game by more than 10 points, despite playing the likes of Texas-Pan American, Abilene Christian and Alaska-Anchorage.

This year, TCU is destroying opponents. The Horned Frogs beat Washington State by 27 points after only beating the Cougars by two last year. They have a 53-point win over Mississippi Valley State. They won by 24 points against a Radford team that just won a road game against Virginia Tech.

Most noteworthy of all, though, TCU won by 12 at Ole Miss as part of the Big 12/SEC Challenge.

That's a huge win over a legitimate tournament team. Outside of that home loss to TCU, Ole Miss' most recent games were neutral-court wins over Creighton and Cincinnati and a road win over Oregon.

But Ole Miss was no match for TCU as the Horned Frogs had little trouble doing what they've been doing all season against lesser teams.

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Hitting the Glass

Three words: Night and day.

Last year, the Horned Frogs couldn't buy a rebound. In 31 games, they were out-rebounded by 290. Say what you will about rebounding margin, but that's bad no matter how you slice it.

According to KenPom.com (subscription required), TCU ranked 336th in offensive rebounding percentage and 351st in defensive rebounding percentage.

By the way, there are 351 D-I teams in the country.

So far this year, the Horned Frogs are 12th in offensive rebounding percentage and just a shade above average in defensive rebounding. Through nine games this year, they're plus-73 on the glass.

In other words, TCU went from being out-rebounded by a margin of 9.4 per game in 2013-14 to grabbing 8.1 more rebounds per game than its opponents in 2014-15.

To be fair, the problem was much more pronounced in conference play last year, but the Horned Frogs had a rebounding margin of minus-31 by the time they played their first Big 12 game.

Rather than let that continue to be an issue, Trent Johnson went out and fixed the problem. They do still have last year's leading rebounder and shot-blocker (Karviar Shepherd), but he has much more help this time around.

Kenrich Williams—a 6'2" sophomore who played his first year at New Mexico Junior College—is leading the team in rebounding percentage. Chris Washburn—a sophomore who played one disappointing season at UTEP in 2012-13 before transferring and sitting out a season—has been TCU's best defensive rebounder.

"Both of those guys are very, very unselfish," Johnson said after the recent win over Furman, per The Associated Press. "Chris is always looking to pass, he's never trying to force the issue. And Kenrich is the same. They're really stable and playing at a consistent clip right now."

Even Trey Zeigler—a senior guard who previously played for Central Michigan and Pittsburgh—has gotten in on the act with 4.3 rebounds per game.

Not only is TCU much improved on the glass, creating second-chance opportunities for themselves while keeping opponents from doing the same, but the Horned Frogs are doing a substantially better job with those first chances in the paint.

Last year, TCU shot 43.3 percent from two-point range on offense (ranking 338th in the nation, according to KenPom.com) and "held" opponents to 49.8 percent for a difference of minus-6.5 percent.

This year, TCU is shooting 52.4 percent inside the arc and limiting opponents to a two-point percentage of 36.1. That's a difference of positive-16.3 percent, and the defensive percentage ranks fifth in the nation, not far behind great defensive programs like Kentucky, Texas and Virginia.

Again, the weak schedule has a lot to do with that, but it has to mean something that the Horned Frogs held Ole Miss to a season-low 54 points on 62 possessions just a few days after the Rebels scored 66 points on 56 possessions against a notoriously stingy defense in Cincinnati.

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So You Think They Can Dance?

What a bizarre start to the 2014-15 season.

Annual powerhouses like Michigan, Florida and Syracuse are doing everything they can to play their way out of the tournament picture, and here we are wondering whether TCU has a chance to make the NCAA tournament.

The short answer: Why not?

TCU's nonconference schedule may be weak, but unless Ohio State plans on beating North Carolina next weekend, the Horned Frogs will enter the month of January with a substantially better-looking resume than the Buckeyes.

If we're right about the 13-0 record, TCU merely needs to win eight games against the best conference in the country to enter the Big 12 conference tournament with a 21-10 record, seven or eight top-100 wins and zero bad losses.

Take away the name and that's a doggone good resume in a world where North Carolina State was 19-12 with five top-100 wins at the end of the 2013-14 regular season before going dancing.

That just leaves the minor issue of TCU actually winning eight Big 12 games.

Not only did the Horned Frogs go 0-18 last season, but they lost 14 of those games by double digits.

It's going to take more than an improved rebounding margin to flip the script, but how much could improved swagger be worth?

TCU received 45 votes in this week's AP poll, good for 32nd place. As a few more weeks go by and a zero remains in the loss column, that vote count is only going to increase.

There's a very good chance the Horned Frogs will sneak into the AP Top 25 for the first time since January 1999.

We see you, TCU. It won't be long until the rest of the world does, too.

Statistics courtesy of KenPom.com (subscription required) and Sports-Reference.com

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.