As Tweeted yesterday on the official D1scourse Twitter page (@D1scourse), no ACC team since the expansion of the NCAA tournament to 64 teams has missed the event after starting 7-3 in conference play.
In fact, since 1980 and the advent of a 48-team field, only one 7-3 starter --- 1983 Wake Forest --- missed the field.
Maryland, as you might recall, is 7-3 in conference play. So that's a good sign.
You might wonder how, exactly, you come up with such a statistic. Other than asking someone else to figure it out. Or the old high school math class approach, which was to look up the answers to all the odd-numbered questions in the back of the book.
The way I did it was to come up with a list of all the teams that won at least seven games in the conference and failed to make the tournament since 1980. That involved checking the conference standings from each season (all conveniently in the ACC media guide) and figuring out which teams got left out.
The list was only 29 teams deep, which meant cross-checking against school media guides a lot easier. A whopping 19 of those teams finished exactly 7-9, which meant barring a massive losing streak they were crossed out.
The most notable collapse of the 64/65-team era came just last year, when Virginia Tech turned a 6-3 start into a 7-9 finish and was sent to the NIT. But it still wasn't taking a 7-3 start and turning it into a ticket to the wrong postseason tournament.
In any case, Maryland's unquestionably in solid shape. And at this stage, if the Terps somehow missed the tournament, it would be an unprecedented event in terms of frittering away an advantage built up in the first 60 percent of league play.
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