Dan Dakich offers his take on the status of Iowa heading into the NCAA tournament and games he's keeping an eye on. (1:35)

Now that the field of 68 is set, I want to consider 20 of these teams quite apart from the seeds they've been assigned.

The committee says they look at a team's "entire body of work," which is a nice way of saying that some of the bids have gone to teams that struggled down the stretch. Then again, other teams are on fire. I've decided to look at the most extreme examples of both types.

These are your 10 hottest teams in the field of 68:

1. Kansas Jayhawks

Congratulations to Bill Self and the Jayhawks, proud owners of the overall No. 1 seed and (equally important!) the top spot in John Gasaway's list of the field's hottest teams. I realize "no great teams" was the evaluative battle cry of choice this season, and I used it as much as anyone. That being said, a KU team that sits at 30-4 and hasn't lost a game in seven weeks sounds like it's on the verge of the "G" word to me. Once Self settled on Landen Lucas as the answer at center alongside Perry Ellis, Kansas played consistently excellent D and made 55 percent of its 2s over the remainder of the Big 12 regular season.