Notre Dame Basketball: Can the Fighting Irish make the NCAA Tournament?

Notre Dame is has a vey real shot at an-large bid bid for the NCAA Tounrament. Can Mike Brey and the Irish play their way into the tournament?

As College Basketball fans prepare for the best time of the year with the NCAA tournament. Bubble Teams everywhere are waiting to see if they will hear their name called. Fans are watching intently to see if their team can make a run to a conference tournament final to try to play their way into the tournament, and hope that their team also does not play their way out of the tournament.

Some teams have more compelling cases than others, and other bubble teams are complete head scratchers as to why they are on the bubble in the first place.

One of those confusing Bubble Teams is Notre Dame. The talking heads at ESPN and some of bracketology’s finest would lead you to believe that the Irish have done enough to receive an at large invite into the tournament. As of now at the start of the ACC tournament Notre Dame should be out of brackets and barring a huge run in Brooklyn will most likely remain that way.

More from Busting Brackets

Notre Dame has an interesting case as they were without preseason player of the year front-runner Bonzie Colson for most of the year. Colson has since returned from a broken foot and has come back to lead Notre Dame.

Without Colson the Irish appeared overmatched in their ACC schedule and struggled to win games. Even with Colson back the Irish still appear to struggle, and the Irish were not playing like the world beaters like many thought they would be with Bonzie in the lineup.

Since there is so much emphasis on Quad 1 wins this year and Quad 3 and 4 losses are always bad. When looking at Notre Dame’s resume, they only have two quad 1 wins and have three quad 3 losses. Two of the three quad 3 losses were with Bonzie Colson and those losses were to teams who a tournament team would have beaten.

The losses were to Ball State at home and Indiana at a Neutral site. Those losses added with the other quad 3 loss in Georgia Tech will be enough to keep Notre Dame out of the tournament. The two quad 1 wins were against Syracuse and Wichita State which Bonzie was a huge contributor at that time.

As it has been said on this site numerous times, using the RPI is an outdated and non-predictive metric of how to categorize teams. The fact of the matter of RPI is that the committee is still going to use it, so it still matters to a certain extent. Notre Dame entering play with Florida State tomorrow has an RPI of 70. That is a challenge to make the tournament with those numbers, as very few, if any teams with an RPI have ever made the tournament as an at-large.

Notre Dame is going to have opportunities galore this week to wow the committee and prove they belong. The Irish are going to have to make a deep run in the tournament to even be considered at this point.

The losses to the bad teams are there and the wins, at least at this point, do not offset the bad losses. The Irish did not have a very good performance against 0-18 Pitt in their first-round game of the ACC tournament on Tuesday. Their fans can not be overly confident about that one.

The committee always seems to pull a couple of surprises every year, but the committee is not going to forget about the losses the Irish suffered. The committee is also not going to throw out the games that Notre Dame played without Bonzie.

Those games happened, and injuries happen, and while it is tough to lose a player like Bonzie, the committee is not going to anyone any favors for bad losses you took while your best player is out. As mentioned earlier, two of those losses were suffered while Bonzie was on the floor.

Busting Brackets does have Notre Dame in consideration for the field, because Notre Dame can play their way into the NCAA tournament as an at large. They would need to essentially make it to Friday of the tournament, with a spot on the finals on the line. If they can get to that point, the wins may start to outweigh the bad losses.

Next: 2018 ACC Tournament Breakdown

Mike Brey is always a safe bet to make a deep run in whatever tournament he is in, so other Bubble teams should be watching this tournament intently. If Notre Dame were to get the Auto Bid that would be a bid steal and a bubble team would be on the outside looking in. The next week is going to be a wild one in College Basketball and the ACC is going to be at the center of everyone’s attention.

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