Gonzaga Gets Ultimate Opportunity to Exorcise Tourney Demons vs. Duke

Why should we believe in the Gonzaga Bulldogs?

Outside of incessant inquiries into whether anyone can possibly beat the Kentucky Wildcats, skepticism about Gonzaga—whether as a potential No. 1 seed or as a potential Final Four team—was the most popular subject for debate all season long.

The Zags have now won 16 of the last 18 West Coast Conference regular-season titles and are playing in their 17th consecutive NCAA men's basketball tournament. Head coach Mark Few has the highest winning percentage among all current coaches and even had the audacity this season to bypass the legendary John Wooden for fourth place on that all-time list.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Yet somewhere along the way, Gonzaga devolved into college basketball's version of the Chicago Cubs—the lovable underdogs seemingly cursed to a lifetime of postseason disappointments.

In 1999, Gonzaga was the Cinderella team that broke our brackets and won our hearts. Since then, the squad has been the Bulldogs that cried "wolf," routinely failing to meet expectations, culminating in 2013's No. 1 seed that resulted in a round-of-32 exit.

But Sunday's game against Duke will be Gonzaga's ultimate shot at redemption.

Recent history would suggest that Gonzaga is a massive underdog. The Bulldogs are competing in just their second Elite Eight ever, while the Blue Devils are trying to reach the Final Four for the 12th time in 30 years.

Look exclusively at the tale of this year's tape, though, and a Gonzaga win doesn't seem like such a long shot—because these are incredibly evenly matched teams:

Category	Duke	Gonzaga
Adjusted Offensive Efficiency (Rank)	121.5 (3rd)	120.2 (4th)
Adjusted Defensive Efficiency	94.4 (27th)	94.6 (30th)
Effective Field-Goal Percentage	57.2 (4th)	58.2 (2nd)
Three-point percentage	38.9 (25th)	40.3 (7th)
Two-point percentage	56.6 (3rd)	57.2 (2nd)

One stat conveniently omitted from that chart: two-point field-goal defense. Gonzaga ranks eighth in the nation in that category at 42.2 percent, while Duke allows 46.3 percent (113th).

The hullabaloo heading into the game in Houston will be over how Gonzaga plans to slow down Jahlil Okafor, but shouldn't we instead worry about Duke's ability to stifle Przemek Karnowski, Domantas Sabonis and Kyle Wiltjer?

ESPN's C.L. Brown dubbed Karnowski the player to watch in his preview of this game, saying, "Karnowski has the kind of wide-body frame and bulk that has made Okafor labor this season."

Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

All season long, we talked about Gonzaga being one of the few teams in the country with the height and depth to hang with Kentucky, and that figures to be a sizable advantage for the Bulldogs against a Duke team that allows opponents to score 61.0 percent of their points from inside the three-point arc.

Throw in the versatility of Wiltjer as a 6'10" forward who shoots 46.9 percent from three-point range, the explosiveness of Byron Wesley at small forward and the veteran leadership of seniors Kevin Pangos and Gary Bell Jr. in the backcourt, and Gonzaga would probably be the favorite in this game if it bore the name of a major-conference school on its jerseys.

After all, the Zags have looked pretty doggone unstoppable thus far in the tournament. Even including the Sweet 16 game against UCLA, in which neither team could buy a jump shot, Gonzaga is scoring 1.22 points per possession in the Big Dance and has averaged 83.0 points per game since the beginning of March.

Okafor told Brown, "I think Gonzaga is one of the better teams we've played all year, obviously. There's going to be a lot of challenges, though, not just with their big men."

Not only is this the best team that Few has ever assembled, but Gonzaga is also playing its best basketball of the season right now—just in time for the most important game in school history.

Prior to Saturday's Elite Eight game against Kentucky, Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey said, as noted by Mike DeCourcy of Sporting News, "We are America's team tomorrow. ... And we love it. Certainly, we will take all that support." (Can we go ahead and stop giving Kentucky bulletin-board material?)

But Brey must have been mistaken: America's team of the past 17 years is still dancing, and the Zags are the ones trying to go through the true villain of every NCAA tournament to reach their first Final Four in school history.

Even the most casual fans of the game know that they're supposed to hate Duke. The Blue Devils are to college hoops what the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and Los Angeles Lakers are to their respective sports. You're either really for them or really against them.

Gonzaga is refreshing. Duke is suffocating.

It's good vs. evil, just like the script for every underdog sports movie ever filmed. Pangos might as well be wearing a Jimmy Chitwood jersey. And if that reference was lost on you, put down your phone or laptop and go watch Hoosiers immediately.

Going through UCLA and Utah (which Duke knocked out in the Sweet 16) to reach the national semifinals undoubtedly would have been magical and eternally memorable. However, there's just something poetically perfect about having to beat two of the most successful programs in tournament history to get over a hump that has been steadily growing for more than a decade.

We wouldn't have it any other way.

Now, let's see if that glass slipper still fits.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames. All advanced stats provided by KenPom.com unless otherwise noted.