Irish Alert #4721 - Dome Dance (Previewing Notre Dame's Section of the NCAA Bracket)
Notre Dame returns to Purcell Pavilion to embark on its quest for a third national championship. Let's look at the road ahead!
Hello! This is long, so if you want to skip all the yapping and just learn about Notre Dame’s section of the bracket, scroll until you see a heading or click to navigate to Kent State, Ole Miss, and Marquette (links will open the newsletter in a browser). I also made a bracket pool for the tournament! That is at the bottom of this edition.
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It’s finally NCAA tournament time, and this year’s tournament is shaping up to be a spicy one. I won’t mince words about it: this is one of my favorite weekends of the whole year. 96 games to watch across men’s and women’s basketball makes for four days of perfection in my mind and there are few sports fandom experiences I would trade for it.
This year, Notre Dame earned a 2-seed — its highest so far under coach Ivey — which is a great testament to the final month and a half of its season. To think, the Irish weren’t even included in the selection committee’s first Top-16 reveal. To run through a tough gauntlet and earn that 2-seed is a remarkable sign that the state of the program is healthy, no matter what kind of rocky roads lie ahead.
The Irish seed-line was just one of a few surprises on Selection Sunday though, and far from the most enticing: if you’re one of the masses of casual Caitlin Clark fans out there you should be salivating at the chance to see her and Iowa exorcise demon after demon, or come up short. The Hawkeyes’ region seems made-for-TV and includes Kansas State (who handed Iowa its first loss this season), LSU (rematch of last year’s national championship, anyone?), Colorado (who beat LSU on opening night of this season), Louisville (whose star Hailey Van Lith transferred to LSU), and UCLA (who was projected as a popular Final Four pick before the bracket was revealed). For good measure, the region also includes Creighton and Drake, who both have a bit of a local rivalry with Iowa in their own ways.
The third region of the bracket seems favorable for UConn to return to the Final Four, but that has been the reaction every year since they last won the national championship in 2016. This year, they are a 3-seed, their lowest since 2005. They will have to travel to Portland for their regional, but their opponents seem conquerable. The depleted Virginia Tech pulled the 4-seed in that region and Ohio State is the 2-seed - the Buckeyes beat UConn last year, but just got obliterated by 21 in the Big Ten tournament. The 1-seed in that region is USC, which has been stellar behind freshman JuJu Watkins. The 6-seed (and potential second-round matchup for the Huskies) is Syracuse, so maybe our friends from Storrs will get Dyaisha Fair’d at home.
Notably, Columbia is in a 12-seed play-in game in that region, marking its first tournament appearance and just the second time we’ve had a two-bid Ivy. After the Lions fell to Princeton in their conference championship game, coach Megan Griffith gave a speech where she not only advocated for her team and mid-majors, but also said of the SEC “that conference isn’t very good”. Their reward? An at-large bid, with a play-in game against SEC member Vanderbilt.
The fourth and final region seems to bring the most potential for true madness. Texas and Stanford are strong top seeds, but Tennessee has been on quite a surge and almost took down South Carolina in the SEC tournament. Will we get good Utah or bad Utah? Will we get good Florida State or bad Florida State? Will we get the Gonzaga that beat Stanford or the one that lost to Portland? Will NC State play to its potential? Can Iowa State’s mostly-freshman lineup make some noise? Their double-digit seeds are also no strangers to the tournament or to tournament wins.
But as far as Notre Dame, they’re once again in Regional 1, just like last year. That means their theoretical path to the Final Four would once again include South Carolina. The Gamecocks have a challenging road of their own; their 8- or 9-seed opponent wouldn’t just roll over and both Indiana and Oklahoma could run them out of the gym if they make the Sweet 16. For Notre Dame’s part, their road to a clash with South Carolina would likely run through Oregon State, who has a few great stars of its own. But we’ll talk about that next week, if the Beavs and the Irish both make it there.
For now, I’m going to go through the three teams that will travel to South Bend to start their tournament journey. It’s not going to be a cake walk with just six dependable players + Becky Obinma + Sarah Cernugel, and reaching the Sweet 16 for a third consecutive year would be a great way to maintain the positive momentum in the off-season.
(15) Kent State [MAC Champions (3rd); 21-10, 13-5]
Notre Dame will kick off its tournament run against the Golden Flashes of Kent State, who upset Ball State in the semifinals of the MAC tournament and then vanquished Buffalo as the better seed in the championship game.
Now, no 15-seed has ever beaten at 2-seed in the NCAA Tournament — knock on wood — and there is little reason to believe that will change here. The MAC has had some Sweet 16 teams recently (two in 2018), but typically they are not a very deep conference. Notre Dame beat the second-best team in the conference, Ball State, by 31 in November with seven players getting most of the minutes and without Sonia Citron. They’ll be plus Citron but minus Cassandre Prosper and Kylee Watson for this game, but the numbers should not be a factor barring any serious foul trouble. (The Irish had a second MAC opponent in WMU, but that was such a talent gap that it’s worthless to consider.)
Still, it would be foolish to look past Kent State. They’re an old, experienced team and they’ve got some size to them, including 6’1” forward Jenna Batsch who shoots 39.6% from three and 6’0” guard Katie Shumate who leads the team in scoring and rebounding. Down low, 6’3” forward Bridget Dunn grabs a ton of rebounds herself, but only Batsch and Shumate average in double figures scoring on the season.
I watched a few condensed games of theirs and Kent State is well-coached. Like many low-mid-major champions, the Golden Flashes get all their fundamentals right. They rank in the top third in the country in turnover rate and turnovers per game, as well as foul rate. They box out well and rank in the top 10% of defensive rebounding teams. They focus on high-percentage shots.
Those fundamentals led them to a win over Missouri this year (not that that’s saying much), but they also played LSU and Florida State and got handled both times. They were within two possessions of the Seminoles in the middle of the third quarter and still lost by 27. I think they might be able to hang with Notre Dame for a little bit, similarly, but I just don’t think they have the athleticism or talent to go toe-to-toe with the Irish for 40 minutes.
(7) Ole Miss [SEC At-Large (3rd); 23-8, 12-4]
If this game happens, Ole Miss will be a tough challenge for Notre Dame. This is a team that was ranked or received votes in most of the AP polls this season, and who was third behind only South Carolina and LSU in the SEC standings, only losing to LSU by eight in the SEC tournament. So, they were probably a little under-seeded here, and the Irish will have their work cut out for them.
Since taking over in 2018, Coach Yolett “Yo” McPhee-McCuin has led the Rebels to their greatest success since the early 1990’s. Lots of that success has come since the signing of 5-star Madison Scott, now a senior on this year’s team. Scott’s commitment attracted a lot more talent in the form of freshmen and transfers, and as an 8-seed last year they were able to upset 1-seed Stanford in the second round. This year, their roster features former UNC star Kennedy Todd-Williams, former Pitt standout Rita Igbokwe, and former Florida standout KK Deans.
Coach Yo uses all her roster spots, with 11 players standing at least 6’0” tall. Additionally, 11 players have started at least one game for the Rebels this season. If the game is close or the competition is talented, Ole Miss runs about 7 or 8 deep, although 10 players will still see time more likely than not. They have no go-to player, but the closest would be Arkansas transfer Marquesha Davis, the only player to start every game for them this year and the team’s leading scorer.
When you think Ole Miss you should think defense. No matter who you are, they will try to wear you down. They score 22.9% of their points from the free throw line. They rebound more than 40% of their own missed shots. Their three-point defense is excellent. They block a ton of shots. They draw fouls well. Last year, they upset Stanford 54-49.
Their one glaring weakness is beyond the arc. On offense, they rank 348th in the country out of 360 in three-pointers attempted, and shoot just 26% as a team. I would absolutely expect Notre Dame to play a zone if they do match up with Ole Miss; packing the paint and focusing on rebounding, without fouling, will be a key to success. But it might be a really difficult road, even at home.
(10) Marquette [Big East At-Large (T-3rd); 23-8, 11-7]
Finally, the team that Notre Dame has the least likelihood of playing this weekend is Marquette. The Golden Eagles started off the year super strong under Notre Dame women’s basketball alumna Megan Duffy, who at age 39 is in her seventh season as a Division I head coach. But after beginning 12-0 and ranked #18 with wins over Illinois, Arkansas, BC, and Creighton, the team cooled down and went 11-8 the rest of the way. Five of those losses were by two possessions or less, and the other three were all to UConn by an average margin of 29 points.
The reason I have almost no confidence that they’ll beat Ole Miss is that in their most recent game (a Big East tournament loss to UConn), Marquette scored 0 points in the fourth quarter. Think about that. They only scored 9 in the third and 29 for the whole game. It was a pathetic performance to watch, that communicated the team had sort of just given up, gotten tired, or both.
But, if they do rally to win a game in the tournament, it’ll be because of their shooting. They shoot 45.1% from the field and 36.7% from the arc. They also rebound 76.9% of their opponents’ misses, so if they are having a good shooting day and they catch you sleeping they can separate very quickly. They share the ball really well, averaging a whopping 18 assists per game and assisting on more than two thirds of their made shots. They are also adept at not turning the ball over.
If Notre Dame does wind up playing them, you can expect ND’s “Big Three” to match up with guards Mackenzie Hare and Jordan King and forward Liza Karlen. This would be a favorable matchup for the Irish, who except for Hannah Hidalgo are larger at every position. Also, Duffy uses basically a seven-player rotation, which wouldn’t be too hard on Notre Dame’s thin roster. While I wouldn’t bank on Marquette advancing to the second round, I would feel much more comfortable with Notre Dame’s chances against them than I would against Ole Miss.
That’s all from me this week. If you’d like to join the bracket pool I set up for the newsletter, here’s the link! There will be no buy-in or anything like that this year because it’s the first year of the newsletter, but if this publication gets enough traction then I look forward to future years when I can institute some sort of buy-in where half the proceeds go to charity. This year though, just click and join.
One last thing - the 45-day “Notification-of-Transfer” window began yesterday (Monday). Last year, Notre Dame was one of just five power-conference programs to have zero departing transfers. Whenever the season does end for the Irish, be vigilant for announcements about that or the WNBA draft. I’ll send something out on May 1st, once the window is closed, about any roster changes.
See you next week! For now it’s one game at a time. Go Irish, beat Golden Flashes.