Hansen: Unpacking the NCAA selection committee's miscalculation with ND
In an early April baseball game streamed on ACC Network Extra, the broadcasting crew so regularly mangled the names of the Notre Dame’s players and seemed to guess at the team’s makeup, a reasonable conclusion was that they severely skimped on their research.
Leave it to the NCAA Tournament selection committee to win a game of negligent one-upmanship.
Mere hours before the NCAA revealed its 16 regional hosts Sunday night, and roughly a day before the entire tourney bracket reveal, respected college baseball site D1Baseball.com projected Notre Dame (35-14) as the No. 8 overall seed nationally.
That’s after ND’s semifinal loss to eventual league champ North Carolina in the ACC tourney semis.
It turns out the selection committee didn’t even deem the Irish a top 16 team.
So the Irish hit the road for a Friday regional opener in Statesboro, Ga., as the No. 2 seed in the Georgia Southern four-team regional. Should the Irish advance out of the opening weekend, they’ll play a Super Regional on the road — at No. 1 Tennessee (53-7), no less — whereas a top 8 seed would have meant home games at Frank Eck Stadium in South Bend, Ind. for both rounds.
Georgia Southern (40-18) out of the Sun Belt Conference is the region’s No. 1 seed and No. 16 national seed overall. The Eagles will face regional 4 seed UNC-Greensboro (34-28) at 7 p.m. ET (ESPN+), Notre Dame coach Link Jarrett’s former team and a surprise winner in the Southern Conference Tournament.
Jarrett’s current team, No. 2 seed Notre Dame, will take on 3 seed Texas Tech (37-20), in its opener of the double-elimination regional at 2 p.m. (ACC Network). The Red Raiders finished in a three-way tie for second in the Big 12.
Jarrett’s son, J.T, will miss the tourney entirely after his NC State team was grouped in the “first four out” of the 64-team field. The Wolfpack (36-21) were No. 32 in the RPI and made it to the ACC Baseball Championship final against North Carolina.
NCAA Tournament selection committee chair Mike Buddie, a former Major League pitcher, delivered a word salad when the ESPN2 crew televising Monday’s bracket reveal show pressed him on why the Irish weren’t hosting.
“You go back and forth on these numbers,” Buddie began. “There was some incongruency this year. I think this is my sixth year on the committee. And oftentimes the RPI and conference finish are a little bit more aligned, and so that was a good thing.”
What?
Notre Dame finished 16-11 in the ACC, was the No. 4 seed in the ACC Baseball Championship and was the only one of the top four seeds that made it to the tourney semifinals. The Irish were 13th in the final RPI, better than six of the other host teams.
Notre Dame did not have an impressive non-conference, strength-of-schedule rating, in part because of the lack of power teams in the Midwest to schedule for midweek games.
So there’s admittedly some apples-to-oranges elements in placing the Irish.
Jarrett did schedule seven games against Big Ten teams this season, but even that came back to bite him. Five of the seven ended up as Quadrant 4 games, the lowest-rated you could play. And none of them were Quadrant 1.
“Notre Dame gets dinged for canceling games or for non-conference strength of schedule,” tweeted Aaron Fitt, co-editor and national writer for DIBaseball.com. “Most people in the South just don’t appreciate how hard it is to be a baseball team in freakin’ South Bend, when the season starts mid-February. Cancellations are inevitable. Scheduling is tough.
“Irish have to spend the first five weeks of the season on the road, and they can’t leave for those trips until Thursday evening, because they can’t miss the class time. And again, in a league filled with warm-weather powers, a team in South Bend went 18-12 (counting the ACC tourney). And will not host.”
Buddie admitted cancellations were held against the Irish in his chat with the ESPN2 crew. Two were late-March home games against Virginia Tech. It snowed on Saturday, March 26, and was 28 degrees at game time on Sunday, March 27.
And there was an early-March rainout in the middle of a scheduled three-game series at NC State in early March.
“We certainly know Notre Dame is a phenomenal team, had a great year,” Buddie said. “Unfortunately for them, geography is sometimes their enemy. They lost three conference games (due to cancellation), and those three games — even two of them — could have swung significant direction.
“Unfortunate for sure, but that’s what makes baseball beautiful and frustrating at the same time.”
Here’s the key number the selection committee missed: Notre Dame had a 14-7 record (.667) against Quadrant 1 teams (top 50). Among the 293 teams that play Division I baseball, only No. 1 Tennessee (20-3, .870) did better.
Seven of the 16 host teams had non-winning records against Quadrant 1 teams. And of the top 60 RPI teams, only Gonzaga played fewer home games than Notre Dame’s 20.
“Final thought on the Notre Dame snub,” Fitt tweeted. “Feels like (the) committee gives Big Ten teams leeway because of weather, but somehow a private school (with rigorous academic restrictions that limit missed class time) based in South Bend in a warm-weather conference, doesn’t get the same leeway.”
NCAA TOURNAMENT
Statesboro Regional Schedule
(All Times Eastern)
Friday, June 3
Game 1: #2 Notre Dame vs. #3 Texas Tech, 2 p.m. (ACC Network)
Game 2: #1 Georgia Southern vs. #4 UNCG, 7 p.m. (ESPN+)
Saturday, June 4
Game 3: Game 1 Loser vs. Game 2 Loser, 1 p.m.
Game 4: Game 1 Winner vs. Game 2 Winner, 7 p.m.
Sunday, June 5
Game 5: Game 3 Winner vs. Game 4 Loser, 2 p.m.
Game 6: Game 5 Winner vs. Game 4 Winner, 7 p.m.
Monday, June 6
Game 7: Game 6 Winner vs. Game 6 Loser, 6 p.m.
(if necessary)
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