California's St Mary's College, with six Australians on their active roster, are confidently eyeing an upset against highly-ranked University of Arizona in the NCAA Tournament.
St Mary's and Arizona play 10.45am AEDT Sunday in Salt Lake City, with the winner moving through to the third round against the winner of Xavier and Florida State.
The No.2-ranked Arizona boast 213cm towers, Finland's Lauri Markkanen and Serbia's Dusan Ristic, electric guard Allonzo Trier and Perth forward Keanu Pinder, but St Mary's Australian associate head coach, Marty Clarke, likes the match-up.
"We see it as a good thing," Clarke told AAP.
St Mary's also boast an oversized squad led by Melbourne big man duo 211cm Jock Landale and 206cm forward Dane Pineau, 198cm Tasmanian shooting guard Tanner Krebs and 185cm Sydney point guard Emmett Naar.
St Mary's, seeded seventh, knocked out their first round opponent, the smaller, speedy Virginia Commonwealth University, 85-77, on Thursday and Clarke said his team was built better to combat Arizona.
Australia's new wave of basketball talent, scattered across elite college teams and minnows, had mixed success on Friday in round one clashes.
Baylor University's Jo Lual-Acuil Jr was spectacular in a 91-73 win against New Mexico State on Friday in Tulsa.
The 213cm tall Lual-Acuil Jr, who has a 224cm wingspan, had two of his three monster blocks in the opening two minutes to set the tone for Baylor and confirm his place as one of US college basketball's top defensive players.
Lual-Acuil Jr, who was born in Sudan and fled with his family to Melbourne as a child, also had 16 points and five rebounds for third-seeded Baylor.
Baylor play 11th-seeded USC on Sunday in the second round.
University of Louisville's Melbourne duo Mangok Mathiang and Deng Adel, also Sudanese refugees who discovered basketball in Australia, combined for 34 points in beating Jacksonville State 78-63 in Indianapolis.
The second-seeded Louisville, coached by Rick Pitino, play seventh-seeded Michigan on Sunday in the three-week knockout tournament.
The 68-team NCAA Tournament each year unearths unlikely heroes and villains and Canberra's Chima Moneke, the son of Ugandan diplomats who after a globetrotting early life settled in the Australian capital, became one of the darlings.
His school teammate was future Utah Jazz guard Dante Exum, however the under-sized, goggle-wearing Moneke was unable to find an elite US college to offer him a scholarship and he ended up at Northeast Community College in Nebraska.
His play eventually led to the lightweight University of California Davis.
They fought their way into the NCAA Tournament for the first time in the school's history and beat North Carolina Central in their debut game.
Moneke's high-flying play made him a sensation in the tournament watched by tens of millions of Americans, but he was left in tears on Friday when UC Davis was knocked out by number one seed the University of Kansas 100-62.
