Men's Selection Show: 9 PM / ESPNU

[JeremyCuse]

ND was a FF team, when they were filling brackets I was waiting to see what poor IVY team would get smoked by them. Crazy . Tourney will be tainted

That Ohio State loss cost them that and the overall lack of games only playing 12. Corrigan must be livid. ND returns most of their offense but loses most of the defense in front of Entemann

 

[ClvrUsrnm]

ND was a FF team, when they were filling brackets I was waiting to see what poor IVY team would get smoked by them. Crazy . Tourney will be tainted

Like last year without any Ivys.

 

[JeremyCuse]

AQs are also an issue 10 is a lot, MAAC and Asun getting a team in over Duke and ND is ridiculous

 

[CuseAlum87]

What about putting Virginia in Maryland's quarter?

 

[ivorytower]

Notice that most comments are about ND exclusion not Duke. Reason for that is because after watching the games , becoming clear that ND was the best acc team right now, yes better than UVA, and clearly a team that had all the pieces that could win the championship.

 

[Zack80]

I am happy to see OSU and UVa make it.

It would be nice if just getting one team in would motivate the ACC to add an associate member for lacrosse and get an AQ.

 

[Powellfan]

Wonder if this makes the acc scrap their unique scheduling format? Maybe they do go back to a tournament?

 

[CuseAlum87]

If they had Virginia and Notre Dame in the draw you could understand dropping Duke because of bad losses. I thought either Notre Dame or Duke would get in, but not both. Leaving out both in favor of Harvard is just wrong.

 

[Powellfan]

 

[fieldystick]

Others on here have a much better grasp of the numbers and criteria but it does seem like Harvard and OSU deserved to get in over Notre Dame and Duke. Notre Dame didn’t get to benefit from losing to good teams but not beating them and Duke finally paid for bad losses.

That said I think at this point in the season there is no doubt in my mind that the top three teams in the acc would beat all the Ivy teams that made it. But it is what it is.

I do find it funny that both ND and Duke are left out, especially after Notre Dame celebrated on Saturday like they had made the final four.

They got it right. Remember my meltdown over the consensus call that everyone settled on of Duke & ND in? This was why. I posted this morning with 11th draft. It all comes down to how the bubble was constructed. If Duke wasn't on it (they shouldn't have been), this was the call.

 

[fieldystick]

Wonder if this makes the acc scrap their unique scheduling format? Maybe they do go back to a tournament?

I know that only having 4 conference opponents is a challenge late in the season is a challenge - the answer is that the ACC needs as many out of conference opportunities as possible. 4 conference regular season games is the way to do this. It also limits the damage if you have a team in conference who is bad.

There were limited ones this year that were really meaningful and then the conference promptly lost almost all of them... coupled with Syracuse being really bad, ND having to play them twice, UVA having to play them twice... suddenly you end up here.

Meaningful OOC games vs ~ tournament-level Big Ten / Ivy (these are the points of comparison for at larges):


UVA lost to Maryland


-

ND lost to OSU
ND lost to Maryland

-

Duke lost to Penn

-


UNC beat Brown
UNC lost to OSU

-

Syracuse lost to Cornell
Syracuse lost to Maryland


This was never going to end well by data. None of the data supported a 3-bid ACC. I know that almost everyone here is an ACC fan here in some form, but it's just the hard dang truth. The only chance the ACC had at 2 was a shaky UND>Harvard argument.

 

[Zack80]

That's good for a laugh.

 

[DoctahLexus]

Hard to feel to bad for either of them because you can point to the games they should have won. Don’t lose so much if you want to get in. It’s a competitive process. Early year can’t be taken lightly in any way. Finally Duke payed for the February Duke stuff!

On the other hand, if we are putting calculations aside, I legitimately think that Duke and ND could beat every single Ivy League team with the the way they have played down the stretch this season. Not even joking. I think they would have a better shot at beating MD than most teams in the tourney. But again. Maybe don’t lose so much.

 

[fieldystick]

Early year can’t be taken lightly in any way.

On the other hand, if we are putting calculations aside, I legitimately think that Duke and ND could beat every single Ivy League team with the the way they have played down the stretch this season. Not even joking. I think they would have a better shot at beating MD than most teams in the tourney. But again. Maybe don’t lose so much.

Early season OOC shapes the entire season. A lot of people don't understand it. It literally sets the pecking order of the top conferences in terms of at-larges.

Duke and ND are good teams. Both maybe top 10. But you have to win games. Otherwise, why are we playing the regular season?

 

[Zack80]

Notice that most comments are about ND exclusion not Duke. Reason for that is because after watching the games , becoming clear that ND was the best acc team right now, yes better than UVA, and clearly a team that had all the pieces that could win the championship.

I think UVA is a team that has all the pieces if they are healthy. I don't really feel the same about ND.
UVA could be a tough rematch for the Terps if UVa has healed up over the last few weeks. Go Brown!

 

[DoctahLexus]

Early season OOC shapes the entire season. A lot of people don't understand it. It literally sets the pecking order of the top conferences in terms of at-larges.

Duke and ND are good teams. Both maybe top 10. But you have to win games. Otherwise, why are we playing the regular season?

That’s why it’s hilarious that the “February Duke” thing caught on. Those losses are a total nightmare if a couple other things don’t go your way. Finally it came back to haunt them, although the acc as a whole sucking out of conference early was the bigger problem.

 

[Zack80]

Duke's losses to Loyola and Syracuse were in March. Loyola was Duke's 10th game of the season.

 

[the villager]

Can anyone post the names of the people who made these choices?

 

[rrlbees]

Can anyone post the names of the people who made these choices?

• Chair: Donna Woodruff, Loyola AD
• Jordan Skolnick, Delaware Deputy AD
• Joe Breschi, North Carolina Coach
• Greg Raymond, Hobart Coach
• Brandon Macneill, Denver Deputy AD

 

[4evaOrange]

• Chair: Donna Woodruff, Loyola AD
• Jordan Skolnick, Delaware Deputy AD
• Joe Breschi, North Carolina Coach
• Greg Raymond, Hobart Coach
• Brandon Macneill, Denver Deputy AD

2 active coaches are on the committee to pick the field?

 

[Powellfan]

 

[Laxfanshutt]

I my be off but it looks to me they set this tourney to favor the Ives .. And I still think the final game is going to be Maryland versus Georgetown

 

[Faegan]

Two of NDs losses were to RPI teams 1 & 2, and they lost to MD by only 2 goals. ND is +4 in the RPI to Harvard.

 

[DoctahLexus]

Duke's losses to Loyola and Syracuse were in March. Loyola was Duke's 10th game of the season.

Pretty obvious that I was referring to early losses to bad out of conference teams. So what if they weren’t in February this year

 

[Cuse All-In]

This is one of those situations where the numbers and criteria can be used to support the committee's decision. I can understand the rationale for Duke with bad losses. Notre Dame is the tougher one given just how good they are in terms of talent and the "eye" test - they looked fantastic on Saturday. But...ND beat Duke twice and Cuse twice which would have been huge in past years. Cuse was a huge drag on the ACC this year which is the elephant in the room.

Of course, the other elephant in the room is some of the remaining selections - St Joe's, Delaware, Vermont and particularly Manhattan. These teams are included as conference champs/play-ins in the name of building the sport, inclusion etc. To be blunt, both ND and Duke are clearly better than any of them as we all know. IMO they should be conference champs but not included in the tourney unless they deserve it on their own merits.

At the end of the day, I would have put ND in simply based on the reasons everyone has talked about - phenomenal talent, getting better every week, close losses to 1 and 3 teams etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was a little sympathy for the Ivies missing out on a full season in 2021.