Eight ACC teams land in NCAA Tournament field

A wrap-up of the conference's regular season & a comparison to preseason predictions.

A rare afternoon newsletter!

The NCAA selection show was on Monday, and the ACC fared rather poorly. Two of the biggest surprise omissions were Louisville and Pittsburgh, a pair of teams that seemed like locks at one point in the year. With plenty of end-of-year content coming in the week to come, I figured now was a good time to take a look at how the ACC regular season shaped out vs. what many expected, as well as a look at the NCAA Tournament picture.

Regular Season (Coaches Poll)

Well, the preseason coaches poll did not have high expectations for Notre Dame. Head coach Link Jarrett promptly guided his program to the regular-season title in an impressive manner. Amidst plenty of chaos within the conference, the Irish were a calming force, and it’s easily the story of the year that they managed to go from a hypothetical last place finish to the regular season title.

Here’s a quick rundown of the rest of the teams (outside of BC) that had a three-plus place swing from the preseason poll to the final conference seeding.

Louisville (minus-6): The Cardinals, at one point, were top-10 in the country and 14-6 in the ACC. Then the wheels came off. As Baseball America’s Joe Healy noted, the Cardinals went 2-12 in their final 14 ACC games and lacked strong non-conference wins to push it into the NCAA Tournament from the bubble.

Virginia (minus-5): The Cavaliers might of underperformed their projected finish by five spots, but they enter this postseason poised for a surprise run. Few teams were as hot as Virginia over the stretch run of the season as the club started to play to its potential. The Cavaliers won 12 of their last 17 games behind the likes of ace Andrew Abbott and potent hitters Zack Gelof and Kyle Teel.

Georgia Tech (plus-4): The Coastal Division champions, Tech outperformed expectations and surpassed Miami and Virginia over the course of the regular season. The Yellow Jackets were bounced in the conference semifinals, but still earned a two-seed in the NCAA Tournament.

Wake Forest (minus-4): It was an ugly, ugly year for the Demon Deacons. Pegged as a team to earn a two-seed in regionals in the preseason, Wake Forest never got going and finished with just 10 conference wins and a mere half game above last place.

North Carolina (plus-4): The Tar Heels outperformed expectations and worked their way into an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament as one of the “last four in.” They had the fourth-toughest schedule and won six of their last nine games to bolster their case. Finishing .500 in conference play was a good result for UNC ultimately.

Pittsburgh (plus-3): The Panthers may have overperformed expectations, but they were dealt the ultimate heartbreak: Being named one of the 20 potential hosts before slumping heavily to close the year and ultimately missing the NCAA Tournament. Pitt was trying to make its first appearance since 1995 but was left out after being swept in its last two conference weekends of the year and failing to make noise at the conference tourney.

Clemson (minus-3): The Tigers were a team with NCAA Tournament hopes and showed flashes of that potential, but closed the regular season on a four-game losing streak to fall to 11th. They were startling inconsistent, posting winning streaks of five and seven games—the latter included a three-game sweep of Louisville—but also had skids of five, six, and seven games.

NCAA Tournament

Expectations weren’t just high for the Eagles, they were for the rest of the conference as well. D1Baseball pegged the conference as a 10-bid league on the strength of four national seeds. They nearly met that with eight—one shy of the SEC for the most in the country—but they only earned one national seed and it wasn’t even a top-eight.

You could tell what the committee thought of the conference based on the seedings. Notre Dame—the cream of the crop in the conference—was slotted No. 10 and the only one to host. Pittsburgh and Louisville didn’t make it after slumping to end the year, while Duke, North Carolina State, and Georgia Tech earned two seeds. Even Florida State surprisingly fell to the third-seed line and have to travel to No. 12 Ole Miss.

Baseball America’s Joe Healy summed it up aptly:

At every turn, the selection committee this season has made it clear that it was fairly unimpressed with the ACC. Just two league sites were chosen among the 20 potential hosts. Notre Dame, the runaway league champ and the ACC’s only host, was not a top-eight seed. And today, two of the three true bubble teams in the conference, along with North Carolina, which got in, were left out.

Featured Images Courtesy of ACC Athletics / Respective Teams