It seems as if everyone remotely associated with men's college basketball played out a simulated NCAA tournament.

But who would really go through the trouble of pretending who would win a 64-team tournament?

Besides us, we mean.

We may have found the best tournament simulation possible. The folks at FiveThirtyEight ran through March Madness, which was supposed to culminate Monday night with the national championship game. They used ESPN's latest bracketology and the "100-sided dice roll," along with their forecast probabilities, to predict results.

It was Michigan State and Kansas in the final.

And at noon Monday, the website revealed its champion.

Get ready for the parade on Grand River, as the Spartans beat the Jayhawks by one point to win FiveThirtyEight's mythical championship.

"Throughout our mock tourney, Sparty grew comfortable under the gun, with the team’s final three wins coming by single digits. Meanwhile, Kansas hadn’t played a game tighter than 10 points entering the final," FiveThirtyEight's Josh Planos wrote.

Real MSU news:Cassius Winston becomes MSU's second consensus All-American

MSU was a No. 3 seed in this tournament, but as he pointed out, the Spartans excel especially when they don't have a top seed.

"No team has done a better job since 2000 of outperforming seed expectations, according to Bart Torvik: 12 Sweet 16s (third most), nine Elite Eights (second most), seven Final Fours (most) and two national finals (tied for sixth most)," Planos wrote.

And if you subscribe to the theory that teams find a way to get hot this time of year, the Spartans were proof of that.

"Over the final 10 games of the regular season, Michigan State had outscored opponents by 40.2 points per 100 possessions with its starters on the court, according to Pivot Analysis," Planos wrote.

[ Drew Sharp flashback: Mateen Cleaves put the 'stone' in Flint to carry MSU to title ]

Don't think someone was just running these mocks with green-and-white colored glasses. MSU and Kansas were sensible picks to make the final because "(l)ike Kansas, Michigan State ranked between the 80th and 100th percentiles in scoring efficiency and between the 90th and 100th percentiles in defensive efficiency, according to Synergy Sports."

Alas, we won't have that Cassius Winston-Devon Dotson point guard matchup, or Winston capping off what would have been the most decorated career in MSU history.

But it's fun to at least imagine what if.

Contact Kirkland Crawford: kcrawford@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @HiKirkHere.