If there's one thing we have learned here at GK Central, it's to start paying attention early to the nether regions of NCAA brackets. Two dozen cards to the Big Dance, including all the 13-and-below-seeds, are going to get grabbed by conferences that will send one and probably only one team apiece to the tournament. And over the next 10 days, these lower mid-majors and their even smaller brethren will decide whether they're going to put their best Killers forward or leave the field of 68's Giants snickering in safety.

In a fairer world, as Eamonn Brennan writes, conferences would reward regular-season champions with their automatic bids. In the world we've got, tournament championships are what matter, and Western Kentucky was able to go 11-18 in the regular season last season yet make the NCAA tournament with one hot week in early March.

For those of us who love upsets, that's both a problem and an opportunity. The crushing downside: a team can spend all season establishing itself as the best overall squad and best Giant Killer in its conference, only to go down in a fluke, get wiped out of its tournament, lose its chance for an automatic bid and miss out on an at-large, too, like Middle Tennessee did in 2012. But Killers can also go on conference championship runs, seizing automatic bids and thereby upping the potential for NCAA carnage, as Ohio did last season.

This season, among conferences that will probably send just one representative to the NCAA tournament, there are 10 where the top team (the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament, or, where we don't know that yet, the team with the best conference record) is also the top potential Giant Killer and has at least a 10 percent chance of slaying a generic Giant. Here they are, listed in order of their GK Rating:

Ohio Valley -- Belmont (46.0)

Sun Belt -- Middle Tennessee (29.7)

Mid-American -- Akron (29.2)

Northeast -- Robert Morris (17.2)

Ivy -- Princeton (16.2)

Southern -- Davidson (15.9)

Colonial -- Northeastern (14.3)

America East -- SUNY-Stony Brook (11.9)

Big South -- Charleston Southern (11.9)

Atlantic Sun -- Mercer (10.8) or Florida-Gulf Coast (11.0)

Further, there are two conferences almost certain to send two teams each to the Big Dance, and for both, their best teams also project as their best Killers: Wichita State (38.1) and Creighton (24.2) in the Missouri Valley, and Saint Mary's (53.7) and Gonzaga (a Giant this season) in the WCC.

In all of these cases, if you want strong NCAA underdogs in a couple of weeks, you better root for conference favorites now. Because if Middle Tennessee blows another game to Arkansas State, the odds of the Sun Belt champion pulling off a big NCAA upset will crash.

In fact, among these conferences, there's only one spoiler worth pulling for: the Ohio Valley's Eastern Kentucky (35.6), a squad of fun statistical extremes, as we've noted. The Colonels rely on bombs, though they can score from anywhere (44.6 percent of attempts on 3s, effective field goal percentage of 34.9 percent). They also generate a ton of turnovers, and have four players who can steal the ball at any moment. And Mike DiNunno, their senior point guard, is quick, but runs games at a thudding pace, limiting opponents' chances for possessions and comebacks.

Eastern Kentucky will have to beat the winner of Thursday night's OVC opener and then Murray State just to make the conference final. But if they somehow earn an automatic bid, Belmont could still make the NCAA tourney as an at-large, and we'd have Killers spraying slingshots all over the place.

The real auto-bid action, however, is coming in the six conference tournaments in which the No. 1 seed (or current first-place team) is not the No. 1 Killer. Here's where the upstarts have to start -- and where you need to root for underdogs:

Big West

As it did in 2012, Long Beach State (8.2) sits atop the conference standings; this, however, is not your older brother's 49ers, who were primed to be Killers but lost in the first round to New Mexico and said goodbye to four senior starters. Just one team here could make things interesting: Cal Poly (17.4), a wildly inconsistent squad (ranking sixth in the NCAA in BPI variance) that knows how to shoot 3s (37.1 percent from downtown), protect the ball (opponent steals on just 6.4 percent of possessions, the lowest rate in the country) and keep the game slow to thwart Giants from opening up insurmountable leads (60.0 possessions per game, 343rd in the NCAA).

It all came together for the Mustangs on Thanksgiving weekend against UCLA, which at the time was the No. 11 team in the country. After Cal Poly came from 15 points down with 10 minutes remaining in the second half to win 70-68, coach Joe Callero added this inspirational quote to our GK canon: "We thought that if we could get it close, maybe we get a bounce, maybe they miss a shot, maybe we make a shot. It's a lot more pressure on them when they are nationally ranked and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and those guys in green jerseys come trucking down here." They'll get back on the trucks to Anaheim this weekend.

See them in action: semifinals, March 14, ESPN3; finals, March 15, ESPN2.

Conference USA

We've made the case for Southern Mississippi (53.4) as an ace Killer: the Golden Eagles pile up possessions with pressure defense and monstrous offensive rebounding. So here's a question: Why wouldn't you want the Golden Eagles in the NCAA tournament? Because it's so important to give an at-large bid to a sixth SEC team or seventh Pac-12 team or ninth Big East team? Conference USA has sent two members to the big tourney in each of the past three seasons, and Southern Mississippi is better than any of those teams, according to Ken Pomeroy: Houston in 2010, UAB in 2011 and the 2012 version Golden Eagles.

This season, we estimate C-USA ranks 11th among conferences, about where it was last season and right at the point where it should be eligible for multiple bids. (The WCC, A-10 and MVC, ranking just above C-USA, are all likely to send two or more teams to the tournament.) With the third-highest GK Rating of any Killer in the country, Southern Mississippi would inject more excitement into the NCAA brackets than any team that's not already a lock to make the tournament. But the way Bracketology is breaking, the Golden Eagles will almost certainly have to win the C-USA tournament, which probably means beating No. 1 seed Memphis (26.2), to get there.

Horizon

There's not much difference between No. 1 seed Valparaiso (26.0) and No. 2 Detroit (33.8) in fundamental quality: the two teams are separated by 1.2 points in BPI. But they play utterly different games. The Crusaders emphasize defensive rebounding and shoot effectively from the perimeter, but are sloppy with the ball and commit (and draw) a lot of fouls down low. The Titans rank 17th in the nation in offensive efficiency (113.8 points per 100 possessions), largely because they almost never turn the ball over (15.4 percent of possessions, the third-lowest rate in the NCAA), and while they allow opponents to shoot out the lights, they compensate by generating steals. They've also played a much tougher and more extensive nonconference schedule.

On balance, our model prefers Detroit -- it loves steals and doesn't mind poor shooting defense, a key lesson being that successful Killers have to worry more about maximizing their own possessions than trying to stop the other team. The Titans' path begins in the Horizon semifinal, where they will meet the winner of Wright State versus Youngstown State on Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.

See them in action: semifinals, March 9, ESPNU; finals, March 12, ESPN

MAAC

Pop quiz: Which NCAA team, out of every Division I program in the country, gains the most points per possession from the unusual combination of 3-pointers and offensive rebounding? Ladies and gentlemen, meet Canisius (25.7). Coach Jim Baron establishes extremely well-defined roles for his teams without worrying too much about establishing an inside shooting presence -- his bombardiers launch, his big bodies crash the boards and that happens to be a highly effective formula for Giant Killing.

The Golden Griffins have a very similar statistical profile to the best of the teams Baron coached in Rhode Island, and now he has the perfect point guard to run his system: his son Billy. Canisius hasn't made things easy: close losses to Loyola and Rider down the stretch have left the Golden Griffins in fifth place in the MAAC, and now they'll probably need to beat three higher seeds to make the NCAA tournament, starting with Iona on Saturday afternoon. But they're a much stronger Killer than anyone else in the conference, including No. 1 seed Niagara (14.3).

See them in action: quarterfinals, March 9, ESPN3; semifinals, March 10, ESPN3; finals, March 11, ESPN2.

Summit

North Dakota State (20.0), the league's No. 3 team, isn't much of a Killer; the Bison, who have outscored opponents by 11.7 points per 100 possessions and rank 87th in BPI, are just a better team than No. 1 seed South Dakota State (13.4), who have outscored opponents by 6.3 points per 100 possessions and rank 122nd. Fun fact: On Valentine's Day, North Dakota State played what may have been the worst game of the season by any potentially serious Giant Killer, losing 49-36 to Western Illinois. Of course, at GK Central, we don't care if you go 1-for-13 on 3-point attempts as long as you keep hoisting bombs and making them over the long haul. And the Bison do both.

See them in action: finals, March 12, ESPN2.

WAC

Louisiana Tech (17.0), an uptempo team that forces opponents inside and then doesn't let them score and hasn't lost since autumn, not only leads the WAC, it's knocking on the door of a 12-seed in some bracket projections. But Denver (49.9), running the old Princeton offense under coach Joe Scott, is a far better Killer: the Pioneers' snail's-pace crawl (just 58.9 possessions per game, next to last in the NCAA) obscures the fact they're deadly shooters, and they steal the ball on more than 15 percent of opponent possessions, the third-best rate in the NCAA. The Pioneers still have a chance to catch Louisiana Tech in the WAC, and the two teams finish the regular season at mile-high Magness Arena on Saturday. But the real showdown will come at the conference tournament next week in Las Vegas. If Denver prevails, some Giant's going to be in for a '96-UCLA-style surprise the following week.

See them in action: finals, March 16, ESPNU.

For the sake of completeness, there are also five conferences in which even the best Killer doesn't have a 10 percent chance of beating a generic Giant, much less the No. 1 or No. 2 NCAA seed they will probably face: the Southland (led by Stephen F. Austin, with a GK Rating of 9.1), Patriot (Lehigh, 8.7), MEAC (North Carolina Central, 7.5), Big Sky (Weber State, 6.9) and Southwestern (Southern, 2.7).

Finally, if you're looking for a team to root against making the tournament, Bucknell, which is on the verge of landing a 13-seed, is your best option. The Bison have put together a 25-5 season that anyone outside these pages would have to call extremely impressive: They use their height to smother opponents near the basket, they lost by just two points at Missouri and are now the 58th-best team in the country, according to BPI. But while Bucknell ranks among the top five teams in the NCAA at preventing steals, it's in the bottom five at generating steals. The Bison are great at defensive rebounding, but horrible on the offensive glass. And while they shoot 37.2 percent from downtown, they take just 24.4 percent of their shots from behind the 3-point arc (ranking 327th in the NCAA).

They are, in other words, as conservative as G. Gordon Liddy, and that's no way to beat a Giant. Bucknell's GK Rating is 4.3. As in 4.3 percentage points above Grambling.