inverted

I'm not sure how many people know or realize this but ND basketball is a all time top 13 program.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:uVolMALQagYJ:assets.espn.go.com/photo/200...

I don't think Purdue rates anywhere near as high on the football scale.

That's exactly where I'm coming from. This is a big opportunity to bust through a ceiling.

I don't think it's "going all Purdue fan" to expect this specific ND team to do well in the postseason.

Not merely because of the seed or the opponent but also because the committee sent us all the way across the damn country to play the opening rounds in Spokane (IIRC). I don't expect that we should have those guys handing us anything on a silver platter, but the combination of things was a pretty raw deal.

What frustrated me most about the first-round loss last season was that the committee finally gave ND a friendly seed, and we pissed the whole thing away with our worst performance in over a month. And that had nothing to do with shit that Mike Brey did or did not do back in 2002 or 2005 or whenever else.

ND was within an eyelash of winning the Duke and Ole Miss games, which would have placed the Irish in the Sweet 16 in each of Brey's first three years. If you'd have told me at the end of that third season that we would eventually be another 7 years down the road, that the team had not made it back to the regionals since then and that they'd missed the NCAAs completely more often than they'd made it, I never would have believed that Brey would still be employed as our head coach. And yet here we are.

We can talk about the small sample size of the history involved or whatever else, but I come to two conclusions about the current group:

1. They are the best-equipped team Brey has had during his tenure to perform well in the NCAAs.

2. They are going to have the most favorable NCAA placement of any Irish team in Brey's time.

People can fuss over Tennessee, Missouri, Utah State or whoever else, but in any other year, we would be playing an opponent of that approximate caliber on Thursday or Friday. Having the opportunity to open the tourney against a team that we should pound the crap out of will be a significant advantage, allowing the guys to work through whatever early-tournament jitters they might have in a game that should not be all that competitive. That the top two seeds often advance to the regionals obviously has a lot to do with the fact that they spent the previous four months proving themselves to be the best teams in the country, but the friendly brackets certainly don't hurt, either.

I ask because I honestly don't know. I'd speculate that "always make the tournament, regularly make the second round, make the Sweet 16 as often as not" is actually quite a bit rarer air than one would think on the surface. I'll have to take a look later.

Also, I'm in no way defending Brey's Year 4 and beyond performance. I'm only trying to point out that what might seem like modest expectations on the surface might be a harder target to hit than you'd think.

I can only imagine how bad it would have been if the school in question would have been ND. The coach would have been fired over the internet a hundred times over, with literally thousands upon thousands of diplomas needlessly burned out of spite.

I know that I wanted to make those annual failures in March about Krzyzewski because I hate his stupid rat guts, but the unfortunate fact is that you have to be doing something right to accumulate that many high seeds in the first place. Weekly blowjobs from Dick Vitale will only take a team so far.

to give my final (mental) analysis. This team is performing better in March than it was in November. It is performing way beyond pre-season expectations. For that, I give Brey a ton of credit, and I'm really looking forward to what they can do over the next several weeks.

However, this is the first Brey team that I can recall who has improved throughout the season, as opposed to limping into the NCAAs. There may be another, but it's been rare. For me, comparing pre-season expectations with final post-season tournament results and ranking would be a better barometer of the team's performance over time than tournament seeding versus final result. For better or worse, post-season results matter more than the regular season, and ND has had very few shining moments this past decade. This year's team has been quite enjoyable to watch, and I hope/expect this year's final results will finally buck that trend.

If we land a #1 or #2 seed and don't make it to the elite 8, we will have failed to play to our seed. Will it be a tournament failure? Does it fit a pattern of Mike Brey teams in terms of tournament success? Based on preseason expectations or tournament expectations?

Mike Krzyzewski teams sometimes make it to the Final Four. Based on seed (and probably preseason expectations), his teams "should" make it to the Final Four more often than they do. If we want to say that Brey teams don't play to preseason or midseason expectations as well as Krzyzewski teams, that's probably true. If we want to say that Brey teams play to tournament expectations as well as Krzyzewski teams based on seed, that might be true as well.

As for missing the tournament, its certainly a mark against Brey in general, but it isn't relevant to the point I'm trying to make.