Notre Dame & The NCAA Tournament: Pride And Woe

Notre Dame men’s basketball and the NCAA Tournament are a a bittersweet experience of pride and woe.

The pride is that only eight other programs have officially made more appearances in the Big Dance than the Fighting Irish. Here is the list for most NCAA Tournament appearances, per Wikipedia, entering today’s Selection Sunday:

1. Kentucky — 54, with 17 Final Fours and eight national titles.

2. North Carolina — 46, with 18 Final Fours and five national titles.

3. UCLA — 45, with 17 Final Fours and 11 national titles.

4. Kansas — 44, with 14 Final Fours and three national titles.

5. Louisville — 41, with 10 Final Fours and three national titles.

6. Duke — 39, with 16 Final Fours and five national titles.

7. Indiana — 38, with eight Final Fours and five national titles.

8. Syracuse — 37, with five Final Fours and one national title.

9. Villanova — 34, with four Final Fours and one national title.

9t. Notre Dame — 34, with one Final Four and zero national titles.

The NCAA actually recognizes 33 for Villanova because it had to vacate the 1971 runner-up finish to UCLA when it was discovered that All-American Howard Porter had already signed with an agent prior to the tourney. So technically, Notre Dame has the No. 9 spot to itself.

Notice something about this top 10? All but Notre Dame are known as “basketball schools,” a demarcation from “football schools” such as the Fighting Irish.

That’s not to say that you can’t on occasion have great seasons in the other. The Florida Gators won a couple basketball of national titles in 2006 and 2007, one of them over Ohio State, and Michigan excelled in the late 1980s and then with the “Fab Five,” although they too have seen their championship game appearances “vacated.” Michigan State made the College Football Playoff this year and could be in the Final Four again in men’s basketball, like it has been seven times already under head coach Tom Izzo.

Notre Dame became the first school (and then Florida) to win the national title in football and two months later make the Final Four (1977-78). The Gators pulled off the ultimate double with football and basketball national titles during the 2006-07 school year. Thus, there is pride that Notre Dame hoops has fared as well as it has to make the Big Dance so consistently.

Then there is the woe to balance the pride: Notre Dame is the leader with most NCAA Tournament appearances without a national title.

The Irish are 34-38 overall, including 2-4 in consolation games that used to be played past the first round from the 1950s through 1975. All the other schools ahead of it in appearances, plus Villanova, have won national titles. So have several other schools not far behind it in total appearances, with Connecticut, Marquette, Arkansas and Georgetown among them.

Irish head coach Mike Brey is 9-10 in the tourney after his first 15 seasons, highlighted by last year’s three wins to advance to the Elite Eight for the first time since 1979.

Brey is on a similar trajectory in the NCAA Tournament as Digger Phelps, who coached the Irish 20 seasons (1971-91) and was 15-16 (14-14 when excluding consolation games).

The best winning percentage among Irish coaches belongs to 1952-64 boss John Jordan, whose 8-6 mark was highlighted by advancing to the Elite Eight in 1953, 1954 and 1958.

Jordan and Phelps each had three seasons where they won two NCAA Tournament games. Brey has had two, but could join the “triple double” club this season with two victories.

Tournament History

It was in 1953 that Notre Dame lifted its ban on postseason basketball and accepted a bid to its first NCAA Tournament (football would do the same with bowls in 1969).

Notre Dame’s large number of appearances has been bolstered by the fact it was an independent and the tourney took only 22 to 25 teams from the 1950s until 1974. In those days, only the conference winner could be invited, but Notre Dame as an independent could still receive an at-large berth — as it did in 1965 with a pedestrian 15-11 record under first-year coach John Dee.

In 1971, the fifth- and sixth-ranked teams in the final Associated Press poll (USC and South Carolina) could not be invited to the NCAA Tournament because they did not win their conferences. At the same time, 19-7 Notre Dame went as an at-large because of its independent status. That’s what made being an independent so attractive back then (but not after the tournament field expanded).

In its 34 previous NCAA Tournament appearances, Notre Dame has posted two consecutive victories only eight times: 1953, 1954, 1958, 1978, 1979, 1987, 2003 and 2015.

It won three straight twice — once in 1978, for its lone advancement to the Final Four, and last year under Brey. (It now has to win four to reach the Final Four.)

After upsetting No. 1 and defending national champ Indiana in 1954 to advance to the Elite Eight, Notre Dame was the clear-cut favorite to capture the national title. But it suffered the ultimate letdown with a loss to Penn State in the round of eight.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the second round is when many of the most agonizing moments in Notre Dame history occurred:

• Getting upset in overttme by Drake in 1971 to destroy Austin Carr’s national title dreams.

• Michigan in 1974 stunning a 25-2 Irish team led by first-round picks John Shumate, Adrian Dantley and Gary Brokaw.

• North Carolina in 1977 overcoming a 14-point second-half deficit and rallying for a two-point win in the closing seconds.

• BYU’s Danny Ainge in 1981 driving the length of the court and scoring for a 51-50 victory, ending the terrific Kelly Tripucka-Orlando Woolridge-Tracy Jackson era.

Then there was No. 14 seed Arkansas Little Rock’s stunning first-round upset of the No. 3 seed Irish in 1986 … Ole Miss rallying in the second round in 2001 … No. 1 Duke doing the same in 2002 (only to be upset by Indiana in the next round) … Old Dominion’s upset of the Irish in the first round in 2010 … No. 10 seed Florida State putting a 71-57 hurting on No. 2 seed Notre Dame in 2011 … the 67-63 loss to Xavier in 2012 while blowing a 10-point second-half lead. Plus, the next game would have been No. 15 seed Lehigh, an upset winner over No. 2 seed Duke.

Last year, the Irish had unbeaten and No. 1 Kentucky on the ropes before suffering an 11th-hour two-point defeat in the Elite Eight. That victory against the Wildcats might have challenged ending UCLA's 88-game winning streak in 1978 as the greatest win in Irish men's basketball history, just because of the magnitude of defeating a No. 1 unbeaten and advancing to the Final Four at the same time.

This year, if Notre Dame can win two games in the tournament, it would be only the third time such a feat has been achieved in back-to-back years, joining 1953 and 1954, and then 1978 and 1979.