The hope after Notre Dame’s loss to Louisville was that the bracketologists would be a little forgiving. After all, the Irish had just played a tough team that is undefeated at home this season. While most bracketologists indeed looked past the defeat, one did not.
ESPN and Her Hoops Stats both updated their bracketologies Friday and kept the Irish as a No. 5 seed as they had previously. But Connor Groel of CBS Sports was not so charitable. He dropped the Irish to a No. 6 seed, only citing their No. 10 NET Ranking and No. 48 NET SOS. Both numbers are changes from No. 8 and No. 56 respectively from the previous bracketology updates.
Basically, what Groel is saying is that since the Irish’s SOS improved and their NET Ranking, it was time to give the Irish a lower seed. That means the Irish might already are falling further away from a top-four seed that would give them home-court advantage in the first two rounds of an NCAA Tournament. Plus, the margin for error has decreased, so the Irish might need to get it together sooner than they had hoped.
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