2014 March Madness: Projecting San Diego State against North Dakota State

San Diego State overcame a very poor performance to defeat defeat New Mexico State Thursday night, 73-69, in overtime. This matchup against North Dakota State is not favorable to San Diego State since the Bison have an offense that wants to run and score points, and the Aztecs would rather slow the game down and allow their defensive pressure to get points.

Before we breakdown the game itself, lets get into the nerd stuff and look at some statistics and numbers to predict who will win this game.

Lets first start with FiveThirtyEight.com which is updating the bracket game by game with percentages of how far a team will go.

The Aztecs are given a 65 percent to defeat North Dakota State.

Obviously, this gives North Dakota State a 35 percent chance to win this game:

Over at the Giant Killers blog (E$PN Insider) they are given North Dakota State only 20 percent chance to beat the Aztecs:

San Diego State often struggles to score, with just a 46.8 percent effective field goal percentage. But it does collect 36.1 percent of its own misses, another key in warding off a Killer. That's part of the reason the model assigns this game a 20.1 percent chance of an upset, a good chunk less than NDSU's odds against Oklahoma. At the same time, that figure is higher than all but seven Round of 64 matchups, and it's certainly good enough for the Bison to have a fighting chance.

All signs point to San Diego State winning this game, but so did last year's game against Florida Gulf Coast but Florida