Here we are, more than a full day after the storm, examining a bracket that everyone is up in arms about.
If the committee was going all-in on dramatic effect, you would give them at least an 'A' for effort. This is the most polarizing Division 1 men’s bracket in the last decade for a reason: Both Duke and Notre Dame were left out of the selection.
The ACC did elect not to have a playoff, which made sense in the preseason as its team allotment is small (Duke, North Carolina, Syracuse, Notre Dame, and Virginia), and the cost would have been prohibitive. But the season shook out differently than it had before.
The ACC teams were not steamrolling out-of-conference opponents. They kept losing to teams they had routinely beaten and, perhaps less consequently, to each other. Not even a late-season surge from the Irish could get them in, including a decisive win over Duke on the second-to-last day of regular-season competition.
