Notre Dame, Pitt, and ACC Champion for Last Two #1 Seeds, but Notre Dame May Be Risky #1
By Jason Lisk
The first question is Pittsburgh or Notre Dame from the Big East for one guaranteed spot. The argument for Pitt would be that they are the Big East regular season champs. The argument for Notre Dame would be that they beat Pittsburgh in their only meeting, on the road at Pitt, and advanced farther in the Big East tournament.
When I size them up, they have very similar win-loss profiles. Notre Dame is 13-6 against likely at-large caliber teams (teams that will be seeded #12 or higher in the tourney), while Pitt is 10-5. Both are undefeated against non-tourney teams, Notre Dame 13-0 and Pitt 17-0. I think if Notre Dame could have won against Louisville to go to 14-5 and reach the tourney final, they would have surpassed Pitt. Since they have similar W-L profiles against tournament and non-tournament teams, I have Pittsburgh in as the #1 for sure, based on their losses all being close and competitive, whereas Notre Dame had several by double digits.
The next question is Notre Dame versus Duke or North Carolina. A win by Duke makes them 9-4 against likely tourney teams, and like Notre Dame, no losses against teams on the outside (21-0). North Carolina would also have a 9-4 record against projected tourney teams, but would have two losses against teams outside, early to Minnesota, and a bad 20-point loss to Georgia Tech. I think those two results mean that North Carolina will not catch Notre Dame. However, I do think the committee will go with Duke if they win tomorrow and are the ACC Tournament Champion.
As a practical matter, I don’t think it matters too much. Whoever wins the ACC will likely be paired with Notre Dame, with either Notre Dame/Duke, Duke/Notre Dame, or Notre Dame/North Carolina. In regard to Notre Dame, Nate Silver of 538.com fame, writing for the NY Times blog, shows that history has not been kind to similar teams. He uses a methodology similar to what I have done here in several posts, comparing teams to the average team with the same seeding to see if they overachieved or underachieved in the tournament.
According to Silver, 41 teams since 1985 have finished the season in the AP Top 10 after not being ranked pre-season. None made it to the Final Four, which is fairly amazing considering the number of high seeds in the group. They were expected to win 95.5 games as a group based on their collective seeding, and won only 70 tournament games. That’s a fairly remarkable 25.5 win underperformance. Of the eight teams in the group that got a #1 seed, 3 of them lost in the 2nd round, 3 more in the Sweet 16, and Missouri (1994) and Connecticut (1990) came closest to reaching the Final Four. Of the seventeen #2 seeds that were ranked top ten but were unranked to start the season, well over half (11) failed to make the Sweet Sixteen.
[photo via Getty]
[photo via Getty]