Analyzing the Notre Dame women’s basketball NCAA Tournament outlook in last week of regular season
Notre Dame’s best chance to sneak into hosting position for the NCAA Tournament is this week in South Bend. Not next week in Greensboro, N.C.
Sometimes teams make their final pushes to improve tournament seeding at during conference championship week. That’s fine. To each their own. But not every team gets to host two ranked opponents in the final two games of the regular season. That’s the opportunity No. 17 Notre Dame has this week against No. 5 Virginia Tech on Thursday and No. 22 Louisville on Sunday.
It’s unclear what combination of a win and a loss would be better for the Irish. If they lost to Virginia Tech, well, just about everybody does. The Hokies have won 10 games in a row and, according to ESPN brakcetology expert Charlie Creme, they might be a win at Notre Dame away from jumping to the No. 1 seed line. You can’t penalize the Irish for losing to Virginia Tech as long as they keep it competitive at home.
Notre Dame, meanwhile, is currently projected to be a No. 5 seed by Creme. If the tournament started this week, Creme would have the Irish shipping off to play in No. 4 seed Colorado’s pod of four teams in Boulder. But if they became the fifth team to beat the Hokies and only the third in league play, maybe that’d be enough to vault up to the No. 4 seed line themselves.
The regular-season finale against Louisville is tricky, though. Notre Dame already lost to Louisville once. A second defeat wouldn’t be a good look. It would be the second ACC team that the Irish have lost to twice this season. The other is Syracuse. Neither Syracuse nor Louisville are projected to be host programs by Creme. If those schools are hosting, and they both beat Notre Dame twice, then logic suggests the Irish won’t host either, even if they do end up knocking off Virginia Tech in a couple days.
The best way for Notre Dame to play its way into a No. 4 seed is by continuing the current three-game winning streak and beating both Virginia Tech and Louisville. If that happens, the committee probably has no choice but to bring tournament basketball back to Purcell Pavilion for the second year in a row. If the whole point is rewarding teams for taking care of business, then why wouldn’t you give Notre Dame a nod for beating two of the 22 best teams in the country at home in the final week of February and first of March?
Notre Dame is the No. 10 team in the NCAA’s NET rankings, a key factor the committee uses to fill out the bracket field. The Irish have the fewest home wins of any of the top 10 teams with nine, but they can change that in the next five days. They’re tied with No. 1 South Carolina for first in road wins with 11. An 11-3 home record and an 11-2 road mark would be awfully tough for the committee to bypass as a host team.
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NCAA NET Rankings (Feb. 27)
- South Carolina (27-0)
- UConn (23-5)
- Texas (26-3)
- Stanford (24-4)
- UCLA (22-5)
- Iowa (24-4)
- Utah (18-8)
- Ohio State (23-3)
- LSU (24-4)
- Notre Dame (21-6)
- USC (21-5)
- Gonzaga (28-2)
- Indiana (22-4)
- Virginia Tech (23-4)
- NC State (23-5)
- Colorado (20-7)
- Kansas State (23-5)
- Baylor (21-6)
- Oregon State (22-5)
- Duke (18-9)
ESPN expert Charlie Creme’s bracketology seedings (Feb. 27)
NO. 1 SEEDS
South Carolina
Ohio State
Texas
Stanford
NO. 2 SEEDS
UCLA
Virginia Tech
USC
Iowa
NO. 3 SEEDS
NC State
Oregon State
LSU
UConn
NO. 4 SEEDS
Indiana
Kansas State
Colorado
Gonzaga
NO. 5 SEEDS
Syracuse
Utah
Notre Dame
Baylor
