You had to be good enough to qualify...

You had to be good enough to qualify...
by Scoop80 (2020-11-20 20:05:31)
Edited on 2020-11-20 20:06:37

In reply to: Sweet 16 appearances when it was 32 teams posted by Ajax

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Carr's 2 S16 teams and the '74, '76, '77, and '81 teams (each of which won 1 game before losing in S16) all belonged there. Maybe the '75 team was borderline, but they did beat Wooden's final UCLA team, which went on to win the title.

Put another way, the '73 team made it to a 16 team NIT (when the NCAAs only had 25 teams). Once there, they beat UL and UNC teams* in consecutive games. Those 2 teams would've easily qualified for a 64 team NCAA, and USC (ND's first round victim) probably would've, too.

*In Digger's first ND postseason appearance, he beat D. Crum and D. Smith in consecutive games. Let that sink in for a minute.

Excellent points

I was just noting the math to get to 16.

Diggers best team beat Austin Peay and Fly Williams to advance.

From Carr to Tripucka it was an excellent run outside of Diggers first season.

The next 10 years was meh, despite some nice talent. Still think about what could have been with Petrovic.

The 90's was really awful and it would have been even worse if not for Monty or Pat.

The Brey era has had at most 8 quality teams in 20 years and a lot of meh and in terms of players he recruited very little success at the next level.

It just seems some teams ranked lower have accomplished more in their history, especially when you factor the last 40 years!

Btw that NIT team went on a helluva run and beat some great teams. I know the NIT team was a bigger deal back then, but you have to wonder how deflating it was for top 15 teams to not be playing for the NC.

UCLA had incredible teams and talent during their golden era, but they also avoided a lot of great teams in those small field NCAAT's. I still recall Arizona's lone NC they beat 3 number one seeds.
Brey otoh has only beaten a better seed once in a 4/5 game.