ACC Basketball: Bubble Teams in “must-win” mode survive the first round games
Syracuse, Notre Dame and Boston College all had very important opening round games in the ACC Tournament on Tuesday.
The Orange, the Fighting Irish and the Eagles are the three teams closest to the bubble who played in the first round of the ACC Tournament. Syracuse saw themselves as our second team out on Tuesday morning. Notre Dame wasn’t listed, but they have been one of the biggest bubble topics. Boston College isn’t listed on anyone’s bracket and doesn’t show up on the Bracket Matrix, but they’re resume isn’t that terrible.
The Eagles are interesting. They did win their opening round game against Georgia Tech, but there’s probably like a 1% chance they receive an at-large bid. Boston College though has some nice wins. BC beat Duke way back when in December. They had as good as a 10-3 record at one point. The Eagles then picked up nice wins over Florida State, Miami and then Syracuse a couple of weeks ago. They don’t have a loss outside the top-100, but their RPI is 97 and KenPom is 76.
Boston College needed to win more non-conference games such as Providence or Nebraska in-order to be in the discussion. For anyone that has a deeper list of teams, the Eagles may still be on there, but they would need some big time wins over big time teams all within five days of each other.
Where Boston College has come from is impressive though. Under Jim Christian, the Eagles had only one six ACC games in three years. They won seven this season. That’s their best record since the 2012-13 season while this will be their first overall winning season since the 2010-11 season. With an almost guarantee to make the NIT after defeating Georgia Tech, Boston College is making good strides forward.
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Notre Dame is more of a legitimate ACC Bubble Team and they continued to keep their season alive with a win over Pittsburgh Tuesday afternoon in the ACC Tournament.
Notre Dame has been one of the most talked about bubble teams.. A lot of it has to do with the return of Bonzie Colson. He missed 15 games over regular season which is a big reason why the Irish has lost 13 games this season and are on the bubble.
The Fighting Irish has one quality win, but that came back way back on Nov. 22 against Wichita State. Their best ACC wins have been to Syracuse and Florida State. The Orange and Seminoles are bubble teams themselves right now.
The anti-Notre Dame people point out that they have three terrible losses this season. In fact, two out of the three, Indiana and Ball State, came when they were at full strength.
This team did win Maui in November which is where the victory over the Shockers came from. The Irish believes now that they have that team back, they’ll be able to go on a run in the ACC Tournament and prove why they were fifth in the country at one point.
Notre Dame just couldn’t quite break the game wide open. Just when Notre Dame would take a 10-point lead, the Panthers would fight back. They won though and that’s all that really matters at this point.
Some are saying with a win over Virginia Tech, Notre Dame should be in. Others think they need the win over Duke to do it. Almost everyone though agrees that the Irish will need some help. They will be rooting against other bubble teams such as: Marquette, Alabama, Utah, Oklahoma State, Boise State and LSU.
Syracuse Avoided a disaster and defeated Wake Forest in the First Round of the ACC Tournament and is starting to look better than the other two on the bubble.
The Syracuse Orange picked up a great win in the regular season finale. They defeated Clemson which ended a three-game winning streak. That then shot them up on everyone’s bracket.
Prior to that game, they had lost four out of their last five. There was a nice win over Miami in between losses, but a defeat to Boston College really hurt their resume.
Syracuse has become one of the most frustrating teams to determine whether they’re in or out in the past four seasons. Right now it’s anyone’s guess. Our own Bracketology barely had them out going into action on Tuesday. In the bracket matrix out of 132, about half have the Orange.
I think those that have them out right now, will continue to do so into Wednesday morning. I don’t think a win over the Demon Deacons changes much, but it certainly keeps them in the discussion.
The Orange came into Tuesday at 37 in the RPI and 51 in the KenPom. The ACC was the first major conference (besides the Big Ten) to get started this week.
Marquette is the next team ahead of them. The Golden Eagles open up with DePaul in the Big East, but then they would have to play Villanova. Certainly a loss to the Blue Demons would eliminate them, but we’re not sure about one to the Wildcats.
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It’ll be interesting to see how each team is evaluated once they get further into their conference Tournaments and play better teams. Syracuse will have North Carolina next. The Tar Heels are better than what the Eagles and Irish will have on Wednesday. UNC is not your typical No. 6 seed.
The best thing every bubble team can do right now is to just continue to win. If you win enough, you’ll end up with the automatic bid. Otherwise, you’re bound to knock off some good opponents and finalize a good resume. Syracuse will continue to be 50/50 if they lose, but with a win over North Carolina, the Orange will more than likely find themselves in the field.