Notre Dame Basketball: Breaking down the Legends Classic field

Now that the bracket for the 2016 Legends Classic has been revealed, Notre Dame knows who its Nov. 21 opponent will be: Colorado. How do the Irish stack up against the Buffaloes, or the rest of the field for that matter?

Notre Dame basketball will be entering a brave new world in the 2016-2017 season, as Mike Brey will lead a squad without Demetrius Jackson and Zach Auguste, the team’s two leading scorers from last season. And the Legends Classic will test this new squad a great deal with a trio of talented teams.

The Irish will have the advantage of playing in the Barclays Center, where they have performed well in the past, winning the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament there last season. The arena is not yet four years old, but Notre Dame has already played there four times and amassed three straight wins.

And it won’t be the last the Irish see of Brooklyn this season either. The 2017 ACC championships will take place in Barclays, so no matter what, the Legends Classic will be a good tune-up for the Irish.

But what about the actual field at the Classic? What are Notre Dame’s odds of actually winning this thing?

Colorado

Notre Dame will first match up against a program it has never faced in Colorado. The Buffs were knocked out in the first round of March Madness last season, but still went 22-12 and earned its fourth straight trip to the Big Dance.

The Buffaloes return four of five starters from last season, as well as six of the nine players who averaged more than 10 minutes per game. The loss of Josh Scott is certainly a significant blow: he led them in both points and rebounds by large margins.

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Still, the team has a host of experienced veteran players returning, led by George King, Josh Fortune and Wesley Gordon, as well as a star freshman guard in Bryce Peters who could make an immediate impact.

Last year, the Buffs did their best work on the boards, finishing in the top 10 nationally in rebounding margin, while the Irish ranked 130th, with Auguste accounting for about a quarter of the team’s boards. That’s purely an issue of size: Colorado had and will have a lengthy lineup, full of guards bigger than Bonzie Colson.

It’s not as though Notre Dame doesn’t have size: Martinas Geben and Elijah Burns are just about as big as anyone on Colorado. But they have produced little so far in their careers. That will need to change this year, or another superhuman like Pat Connaughton needs to come out of nowhere.

Texas

Like Colorado, Texas had itself a decent enough season last year but failed to do anything interesting late in the spring, winning 20 games and losing in the first round of the NCAA tournament, its third straight tourney appearance.

What’s most dangerous about the Longhorns is their head coach: Shaka Smart. The March Madness darling of VCU hardly set Austin on fire in his first year at Texas, but he managed a decent season with a roster full of senior veterans unfamiliar with him and inexperienced veterans.

Texas is the kind of program that has its ups and downs but can only be out of contention for so long. It has too many resources and too big a recruiting footprint for it to be otherwise. And Smart has taken advantage of that and is bringing a massive amount of talent in for this upcoming season, including Texas native and five-star big man Jarrett Allen.

All of this makes the Horns something of a wild card. There’s just no telling if these freshmen will come in and contribute right away or ride the bench. If they do play up to their talent though, the Irish will be hard pressed to match them.

Northwestern

The only Legends Classic squad not to make the NCAA tournament last season, Northwestern still collected 20 wins and pushed Notre Dame’s first round tourney opponent, Michigan, to overtime in the Big Ten tournament.

The Wildcats are losing their leading scorer from last year, Tre Demps, as well as one other starter, but they return nine of last year’s 12 players, including junior guard Bryant McIntosh, who set the team record for assists in a single season last year.

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In an early-season tournament such as this, experience can often trump youthful talent, and that may be the case when the Wildcats face Texas. Northwestern’s recruiting class is only comprised of three-star freshmen, but the Cats have enough talent to make things interesting. Should they get past the Longhorns, Notre Dame will have to pick up the pace against one of the best defensive teams in the Big Ten.