This might be a 'who are these guys' kind of week for Around the Nation, because every team is either a school we never talk about, or a program that has been in the shadows of the other basketball team on campus recently.

Take Loras. Remember our Daily Dose discussion about old gymnasiums? Well, the Duhawks are closing down their facility, which opened in 1925, at the end of the season and are off to a 9-0 start in the Iowa Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, its best in more than half a century. Can the Duhawks pull it off? They do have one important stat already on their side. Read on in this week's Around the Nation.

The Illinois Wesleyan men have made it to the Final Four twice in our 10 years on this site, but it's the women's basketball team making people stand up and take notice. The No. 16 Titans have been forced to alter their strategy, however, after losing two key post players. And it's the women at William Paterson that are attempting a comeback after nearly a decade out of the limelight. Remember the team that made the Elite Eight in 1998? ... Yeah, I mean, we do, but that's what we're supposed to do. These Pioneers are winning despite shooting 35% from the floor and 63% from the line.

Millsaps' overall record isn't that gaudy, at 11-6, but the Majors are in a three-way tie for first in the SCAC, with the other two coming to town. And FDU-Florham hasn't been heard from since 1998 as well, when it was a controversial bubble pick into the NCAA Tournament and promptly got trounced in the first round. They're back.

That and more in this week's Around the Nation.