The Arizona Wildcats are in the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2017, and as the No. 1 seed in the South Region they’re still the team to beat.

Yet their next opponent in the NCAA Tournament, the fifth-seeded Houston Cougars, are only a 2-point underdog for Thursday night’s game in San Antonio, according to DraftKings Sportsbook. Houston (31-5) has easily handled its first two tourney foes, including a 68-53 win over Illinois in the second round.

To better understand the Coogs, we reached out to Dustin and Sam of The Scott and Holman Pawdcast for some insight. Here are their spirited answers to our apathetic questions:

AZ Desert Swarm: Houston is one of two teams in the country—Gonzaga is the other—that ranks in the Top 10 in KenPom in offensive and defensive efficiency. Which side is better for the Cougars, and which is more likely to have an off performance?

Dustin: “That’s a tough question, as the Coogs have certainly been excellent on both ends of the court this year, as the numbers would indicate. But I would say I have slightly more confidence in Houston’s defense, if for no other reason than that defense has been Kelvin Sampson’s calling card since he got to Houston. UH has finished in the top six nationally in defensive effective field goal percentage for five years in a row now. And as an added bonus, this has been Sampson’s best Houston team at turning opponents over. The Cougars run an 8-man rotation, and while the three bench players aren’t likely to contribute much offensively, this team loves playing defense 1 through 8. They double the post aggressively, they switch and recover remarkably well, and they create a lot of deflections to lead to those turnovers. Houston facing one of the handful of best offensive teams in the country in Arizona is one of the prime matchups of the tournament thus far, in my opinion.”

The Cougars are in their third consecutive Sweet 16, but this one might be the most improbable due to the…