In sports, consistency is supposed to be a virtue: Play the same way every time, and your team stands a good chance of competing for a championship.

Of course, this assumes that a consistent team is also a consistently good team. As it turns out, many of the most consistent teams in college basketball this season happen to be terrible. Moreover, many of the most inconsistent teams are talented, and highly dangerous.

To measure the variability (or lack thereof) of teams, one can enlist the help of statistical guru Ken Pomeroy. His Web site, kenpom.com, tracks a variety of informative metrics, including Consistency, which measures a team’s scoring margins by game — the number of points by which they win or lose.

At the top of the list you’ll find — well, mostly dregs. Just three of the top 11 most consistent teams in America have winning records, all mid-majors: Southland conference leader Sam Houston State, and Horizon League rivals Butler and Wright State. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds,” Ralph Waldo Emerson once said. Little minds and lousy records, apparently.

Now let’s head to the bottom of the list, where the most erratic teams dwell. Xavier, the top team in the Atlantic 10 and the no. 15-ranked team in the country, is also near the bottom of the barrel in Consistency, ranked no. 321 among the 341 Division I teams. No. 17 Marquette ranks 329th in Consistency; no. 22 Kansas State is 332nd, and fast starter Arizona State is dead last at no. 341.

Pomeroy’s Consistency stat stops short of establishing a trajectory for each team’s performance. A team that wins a game by 30, loses by 20, then wins by 30 again, is very different than one that, say, starts the year with a bunch of ugly losses, then matures into a wrecking crew. A game-by-game analysis of the most inconsistent teams gives us a better understanding of how they’ve played, and what we should expect going forward.

No team experienced the highs and lows of conference play over the past week more than Kansas State. The Wildcats came into Wednesday night’s game against no. 2 Kansas having dropped 24 straight to the Jayhawks at home. Michael Beasley wasn’t intimidated, though. The Wildcats forward may be both the best freshman in the nation, and the best player. With K-State’s winless streak against Kansas stretching back to before he was born, Beasley boldly predicted a Wildcats win — and they delivered. Kansas State’s 84–75 win knocked off one of the last two undefeated teams in America, marking the Wildcats’ sixth straight win and cementing them as a national contender — or maybe not. Three days later, Kansas State rolled into Columbia to face a struggling Missouri team that was just 2–4 in Big 12 play. Forty minutes later, the Wildcats’ winning streak was over, and questions re-emerged about their ability to carry their strong play from one game to the next.

K-State’s worst loss of the year came against Xavier, when the Musketeers crushed the Wildcats 103–77 on New Year’s Eve. That’s not the only time Xavier has blown out an opponent this season. The Muskies slammed Coppin State by 39, Virginia by 38, Delaware State by 32, Southeast Missouri State by 31, Dayton by 26, and Auburn by 23. Of their 18 wins this season, only two have been by less than 10 points. On the flip side, Xavier has suffered two blowout losses, by 19 and 22 points. The Muskies’ résumé reads like that of an often dominant team that occasionally suffers major lapses.

Arizona State completes the inconsistency circle. The Sun Devils were the team that dealt Xavier its biggest loss, a 77–55 rout in Tempe on December 15. The Xavier game aside, ASU loaded up with cupcakes in its non-conference schedule, paving the way for a number of blowout wins. The Sun Devils own five wins by 20 points or more, including a 39-point blasting of ubiquitous major-conference punching bag Delaware State. But after a 14–2 start, ASU has gone cold, conjuring up images of last season’s Pac-10 doormat. The Sun Devils suffered their fifth loss in a row Saturday against USC.

That leaves Marquette, the Big East enigma. The Golden Eagles own one of the most potent backcourts in the country, with a three-headed attack of Dominic James, Jerel McNeal, and Wesley Matthews. But when their guards don’t produce, Marquette’s thin frontcourt leaves the team vulnerable to some ugly losses. Expected to be a contender for the conference title this season, the Eagles went through a stretch last month where they lost three out of five Big East games, by an average of 17 points. They’ve since bounced back with three wins in a row, albeit against the conference’s lesser lights. Still, with wins over no. 13 Wisconsin, Seton Hall, and Notre Dame, and a narrow loss earlier in the year to Duke, Marquette has shown it can play with tournament-caliber teams. The prognosis for the erratic four? Arizona State’s five-game slide in Pac-10 play suggests that the Sun Devils aren’t quite ready for prime time. But Kansas State, Xavier, and Marquette have looked like elite teams on multiple occasions, with a giant letdown or two along the way. That makes them big wild cards as we enter the second half of the season. Don’t be surprised if you see one or more of these three make the Elite Eight — or all three bow out in the first weekend of the big dance.

Mr. Keri (jonahkeri@gmail.com) is a writer for ESPN.com’s Page 2.