Seth Davis, the CBS analyst, has been a consistent proponent of expanding the NCAA men’s basketball tournament from the current 68 teams. I couldn’t disagree with him more.

On the other hand, Tuesday night, Davis tweeted this: “The consistent excellence of Gonzaga is one of the most remarkable and under appreciated stories in the history of American sports.”

I couldn’t agree with him more.

Yes, it’s tournament week nationally, with its crush of highs and heartbreak and anticipation. And for the 27th straight year in March, birds will sing, daffodils will emerge and Gonzaga will be in the NCAA tournament.

This is by no means a great Gonzaga team, only a good one, and there are times when it looks like it might be vulnerable to something that almost never happens to the Zags: a first-round defeat in the NCAA tournament. More on that later.

It relies heavily on big man Graham Ike, and if you can take him away, the Zags’ three-point shooters (34 percent) aren’t apt to subdue you. This is hardly one of Mark Few’s Swiss-watch offenses, but more because GU plays long-armed, willing defense, here it is 30-3 and angled toward a No. 3 or 4 seed, which would keep it close to home next week in Portland.

There’s not much buzz nationally around Gonzaga, due partly to the mid-season injury to 18-points-a-game scorer Braden Huff, and the fact there’s only so much oxygen to around with giants like Michigan (which thumped the Zags by 40), Duke, Florida and Arizona.

But it’s more than that. By now, the sporting consciousness is numb to Gonzaga, mesmerized by its metronomic consistency, the likes of which men’s sports has rarely, if ever, seen.

No, there’s no championship banner inside the McCarthey Athletic Center, and at this stage, it would be hard to conclude there will be. It’s wickedly difficult, and paying players doesn’t figure to help make the Zags’ path easier.

But theirs is still a fiefdom of high-floor and high-ceiling. Do these guys ever have a bad year? The Yankees do, Manchester United does. Duke, when it isn’t winning national titles, has been punked in the NCAA first round by Lehigh and Mercer.

Since beginning the string of NCAA appearances in 1999 in Seattle, Gonzaga is 23-3 in first-round games, and there was usually a good reason, like bumping up against Stephen Curry’s 40 points for Davidson in 2008.

Starting the next year, Gonzaga has rattled off opening-round victories 16 seasons in a row, a mark tied for third all-time and second currently to Kansas’s 18. Seven of those wins came when Gonzaga was a No. 5 seed or below. Embedded in all that was Gonzaga’s run of nine straight Sweet 16s from 2015 to 2024.

A decade and a half ago, Butler was all the rage as that program standing in with the heavyweights. It went to the final game in both 2010 and 2011 before succumbing. But now it’s 2026, and Butler hasn’t been to the tournament since 2018.

Here’s the broad brush of what Gonzaga has done. Its NCAA-tournament record is 47-27, the wins by my count tying with Georgetown for No. 18 all-time. Considering the Zags didn’t address that pursuit until their first tournament win in 1999, and other schools were doing it six decades earlier, that’s not bad.

It doesn’t take long to descend to 18th place, when you encircle the bluebloods (Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Indiana, Kansas, that crowd) and an assortment of lesser-but-formidable powers (Arizona, Florida, Louisville, Villanova, Connecticut). Still, 47 wins puts Gonzaga ahead of folks like Maryland, Illinois, Houston, Marquette, Oklahoma, North Carolina State and Notre Dame.

No, it’s not the Holy Grail, a championship banner. But as the college basketball cognoscenti will tell you, Gonzaga’s run is something else. Still.