Where Notre Dame Women's Basketball Stands In The ACC Tournament Seeding Race
How quickly things have changed for Notre Dame women’s basketball. Just over a week ago (Feb. 19 to be exact), the Fighting Irish headed into a rare Monday matchup at Duke tied with the Blue Devils for seventh place in the ACC standings. Eight days and three wins (two on the road) later, the Irish now find themselves in a four-way tie for third place with two regular season games remaining this week.
Niele Ivey’s Irish won’t repeat as regular season champions this year. No. 5 Virginia Tech (23-4, 14-2), this Thursday night’s opponent at Purcell Pavilion, has already locked up the No. 1 seed at next week’s ACC Tournament in Greensboro, NC. Notre Dame. But the Fighting Irish are still in play to clinch a top-four seed and a double-bye that would advance them to the quarterfinals of the tournament.
Notre Dame’s No. 10 NET ranking is the best of any ACC team. They have a win at No. 2 UConn and also played No. 1 South Carolina to open the season. In addition to the all-important double-bye that would come with a top four seed at the ACC Tournament, the Irish could also earn a top four NCAA Tournament seed, which would mean they would host first and second round NCAA games. If they do not receive a top four NCAA seed, they would be send on the road for the entirety of the NCAA Tournament.
No. 19 Syracuse (23-5, 13-4) has clinched one of the top four ACC Tournament seeds and sits just ahead of the four-team, third-place logjam of teams that are all 11-5 in ACC play this season. The three teams Notre Dame is tied with are NC State, Louisville and Florida State. Duke and North Carolina are tied for sixth place at 10-6 in the conference.
Notre Dame holds head-to-head tiebreakers with Florida State and Duke, but NC State and North Carolina both beat the Irish in their lone games against the Irish this season. Syracuse also beat the Irish twice, so they own the tiebreaker against Notre Dame. Louisville beat Notre Dame 73-66 on Feb. 8, so the Irish need a win on Sunday to force a season split.
The ACC’s tiebreaker rules say:
“When two teams are tied in the standings, regular season head-to-head results are used as the tiebreaker.
If the tied teams played each other twice in the regular season and split their games, then each team’s record vs. the team occupying the highest position in the final regular season standings and then continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage.”
That means if Notre Dame beats both Virginia Tech and Louisville to close out the regular season, the Irish would win the tiebreaker against the Cardinals because the No. 1 team, Virginia Tech, beat Louisville on Feb. 18.
Three-way ties are obviously more complicated, but here is how the ACC’s rules read:
If three or more teams are tied in the standings, the following procedures will be used:
(a) The combined record of conference games between the tied teams involved will be compiled. Ties will be broken, and seeds assigned based on the winning percentage of the combined conference records. The higher winning percentage shall prevail, even if the number of games played against the team or group is unequal (i.e., 2-0 is better than 3-1; 1-0 is the same as 2-0; 2-0 is the same as 4-0; 2-1 is the same as 4-2; 1-0 is better than 1-1; 0-1 is the same as 0-2; 0-2 is the same as 0-4).
(b) If procedure (a) fails to break the tie, then each tied team’s record shall be compared to the team occupying the highest position in the final regular-season standings continuing down through the standings until one team gains an advantage by a higher winning percentage.
(c) If the tie is broken by (a) or (b) regarding one or more teams, but three or more teams remain tied, then procedures (a) and (b) will be re-applied among those tied teams only.
(d) If two teams remain tied, procedures (1) and (2) will be followed.
ESPN’s bracketology currently projects Notre Dame as a No. 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They project nine ACC teams in the NCAA field (the most of any conference), which will be officially announced on Sunday, March 17. The SEC has the second-most projected bids at eight, with the Big Ten projected to receive seven bids.
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