Notre Dame is doing exactly what I expected Syracuse to do this year -- beat mediocre teams, and capitalize on the conference being down overall, outside of Duke.
This is my opinion only, but if we placed last year's team in this year's ACC, I think they'd be in the top 3. That doesn't mean that they would be "great," just that they would be better than the majority of the field.
In the most down year in the ACC since we've joined the conference, we're on the cusp of a losing record -- that's what I find discouraging.
None of this directed at the OP / original post in this thread.