Notre Dame basketball picked up a much-needed win over Miami on Sunday, moving them to 17-10 overall on the season and perhaps more importantly, 8-8 in ACC play. With four games to go before the ACC Tournament it’d appear that a minimum of three wins are needed to even have a chance at an NCAA Tournament berth.
There are those that spend seemingly 52 weeks a year breaking down potential brackets with who is in and who is getting whatever seed. Let’s go to them to check on the latest on Notre Dame’s very faint bubble hopes:
USA TODAY –
Notre Dame considered, just not taken too seriously. The good news is that the Fighting Irish find themselves in the “considered” list here and not on the “on life support” list. However, a total of 11 teams are listed before Notre Dame finds it’s way on the list. Best way to describe things here are like in “Dumb and Dumber” and the whole “So you’re saying there’s a chance!” line.
Joe Lunardi – ESPN
The bad news here is Notre Dame does not get listed in either the “first four out” or “next four out”. The good news? We’ll let you know when we find it.
John Gasaway – ESPN
Gasaway goes conference by conference and lists who is safely in the dance and which teams have work to do. The good news is that Notre Dame doesn’t appear to have any work to do in his eyes. However the Fighting Irish basketball team isn’t listed in the “safely in” category, either.
My thoughts:
You absolutely can’t lose any game other than the Florida State contest in the remaining four regular season games. A win over Florida State would also go a long way but another bad loss against the likes of Boston College, Wake Forest or Virginia Tech would be disasterous.
Win all four and the case gets stronger with a win that could potentially knock Florida State out of ACC contention for the regular season championship.
If Notre Dame loses to Florida State but plays them close again, all hope probably isn’t lost but a strong showing in the ACC Tournament could at least aid Notre Dame’s hopes.
In short – just win. A lot. Doesn’t matter if its close or in blowout fashion, just win otherwise the hopes are going to be gone aside from the extremely unlikely chances that Notre Dame could win the ACC Tournament.