Is Notre Dame baseball in line for national seed in NCAA Tournament?
So much will be determined for Notre Dame baseball over the next three weeks.
ACC Tournament seeding? Of course. But more importantly, NCAA Tournament seeding. Those two things go hand in hand. The way to better them both? Just keep winning. Outside of two weekends in conference play, that hasn’t been an issue for head coach Link Jarrett‘s team.
Notre Dame has won five of its last six ACC games since getting swept at Duke in mid-April. Three of the Irish’s other five ACC losses also came all in one weekend; Louisville swept Notre Dame in March. The Irish have also lost once to Virginia Tech and once this past weekend to Boston College.
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The Duke and Boston College losses certainly aren’t good for the résumé. Those two teams are last places in each of the two ACC divisions. The Blue Devils are 8-13 in conference games. The Eagles are 4-20. Notre Dame is 13-8, good enough for second in the Atlantic behind Louisville (14-7). Just beating the Cardinals once would have the Irish on top of the division. Or, avoiding a sweep at Duke or a loss at home to Boston College. Any of those outcomes would have the Irish leading the division.
Now, Notre Dame has just six ACC games remaining before the conference tournament May 24-29. The Irish host Pitt May 13-15 then are on the road at Coastal Division-leading Miami (17-7) May 19-21. Winning the series against the surging Hurricanes is going to be a tall order, so that makes the three games against the Panthers all the more meaningful. A series sweep would go a long way.
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Notre Dame rose to No. 2 in the RPI at the beginning of last week. After a midweek loss to Michigan State and dropping a home game to Boston College, the Irish opened this week down at No. 8. RPI isn’t the only determinant in seeding the NCAA Tournament field, but it’s an important factor. Perhaps the most important. With the top eight seeds in the tournament securing home field advantage through the Super Regional round, Notre Dame is firmly on the fringe of earning that honor.
The polls would suggest the Irish are actually far from it.
D1Baseball.com has Notre Dame ranked No. 18. Baseball America, which had Notre Dame slotted as the No. 1 team in the country a couple months ago, has the Irish ranked No. 8. They’re somewhere in the middle but closer to the lower end in the two other polls. Collegiate Baseball Newspaper has them ranked No. 17. The USA Today Coaches Poll put them a little higher at No. 14. Those numbers don’t indicate a team preparing to host a super.
Notre Dame has been ranked in the top 20 of every poll all year. But the volatile nature of their week-to-week rankings proves how fluid the national perception of the Irish is. There is no better time than May for Notre Dame to prove it is for real. As it stands, Notre Dame could very well host two weeks worth of NCAA Tournament baseball. But that could change with another dud of a weekend like the ones suffered against Louisville and Duke.
At this point in the season, there is no margin for error.
