A North Carolina basketball team is your new national champion. And get this, sports fans: this squad wears red -- not light or dark blue.

The 10th-seeded Davidson College Wildcats may not make it to next month's Final Four showdown in San Antonio, but in the battle of brainy ballplayers, the team sits atop the NCAA brackets, according to Inside Higher Ed, an online publication for the world of academe.

Before the tournament's first tipoff, Inside Higher Ed filled out its bracket using just one measurement: the NCAA's most recent Academic Progress Rate. The formula awards points for athletes that stay in good academic standing and remain enrolled from year to year. The NCAA will begin using the measurement this year to penalize teams that fall below a certain score for academic performance.

The Wildcats aren't too shabby outside the classroom, either. The team has a 22-game winning streak -- the nation's longest -- and will play seventh-seeded Gonzaga on Friday at the RBC Center in Raleigh.

For Davidson President Tom Ross, the Wildcats are already champions. And who knows, maybe they'll snag the trophy at the big dance, too. "When you're talking about six games," Ross said Monday, "anything is possible."

As for the state's other teams, UNC made it to Inside Higher Ed's Final Four, but there were upsets, too. In a stunner, the Duke Blue Devils fell in the first round to Belmont, a Baptist university in Tennessee.

Belmont advanced to the title game before losing to Davidson.

Duke -- considered an academic powerhouse -- just got a bad draw, said Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed editor. "It's probably how Belmont feels in real life."