OK, we have kept you waiting long enough. Since the start of the year, we have focused our Giant Killers project mostly on power-conference programs, slicing and dicing prominent programs that are vulnerable or resistant to upsets, or that are dropping to double-digit seeds. All the while, we were fine-tuning the cathode ray tubes in our statistical model, readying projections from the deep murk of bracket bottoms. Now it’s show time.

Which smaller-conference teams have the qualities to pull off big upsets? Here are the top Sleeper Killers as of Feb. 8, ranked by their Giant Killer Rating, our estimate (from zero to 100 percent) of their chances to beat an average Giant in the NCAA tournament: