As Bubble Watch 2022 tracks the twists and turns of Champ Week, our attention keeps returning to the ACC tournament.
First, Boston College upset Wake Forest and then pushed Miami to the final seconds before bowing out in the quarterfinals.
Meanwhile, Virginia Tech edged Clemson before taking down Notre Dame. Now the Fighting Irish have joined the Demon Deacons in a state of suspenseful waiting.
True, losing to the Hokies, as Mike Brey's team did, is a "better" defeat on paper than what occurred when Wake fell to Boston College. In fact, ACC No. 7 seed Virginia Tech was the favorite against the No. 2 seed Fighting Irish both in Las Vegas and in KenPom.
Falling to the Hokies isn't a bad loss, necessarily, but Notre Dame's situation was already somewhat precarious before game time. Entering the ACC tournament, Brey's team was projected as a No. 11 seed in the field of 68. That seed only has so much room to fall before the Irish drop into serious trouble.
Notre Dame is 4-9 in Quadrants 1 and 2 this season, with one of those wins being the four-point victory at home over Kentucky in December. That game has grown in importance as the Irish have lost each of the last three times they've ventured outside the Joyce Center (at Wake Forest, at Florida State and now to Virginia Tech in Brooklyn).
Both the NET rankings and KenPom have Notre Dame as roughly the No. 50 team in Division I. Teams in that area of the rankings tend to be the heart and soul of the bubble. It appears that Brey's team will be no different.
For the time being, the safest assumption is that Notre Dame is still in the field. That is surely cold comfort to the Fighting Irish, however. A bid thief here or a surging "first four out" team making the jump to "last four in" could overturn this calculation.
Here's our current projection of the bubble: