Notre Dame Is the Final Four Contender No One Is Talking About

It's officially time to make room for Notre Dame in the upper echelon of the ACC hierarchy.

The Fighting Irish stated their case as a potential national championship team by winning their first true road game of the season against a very good North Carolina squad by a score of 71-70.

Prior to Monday night, some were cautiously optimistic about Notre Dame's high-octane offense. The Fighting Irish ranked third in the nation with 85.9 points per game and had the third-best adjusted offensive efficiency, according to KenPom.com (subscription required).

Because they rank that highly in both quantity and quality, one could make a compelling case that they have the best offense in the nation.

However, the location and level of competition kept us from fully buying in. They entered January with a 13-1 record, but they were 0-1 versus RPI Top 50 teams (lost to Providence), playing 11 of those 14 games at home and the other three at neutral sites.

Despite being ranked No. 13 in the country in Monday's AP Top 25, the Fighting Irish were a No. 6 seed in the latest Bracket Matrix update. Three of those 40 prognosticators were so concerned with Notre Dame's RPI and lack of road games that they didn't even include the Fighting Irish in their projected brackets.

We're pretty sure that won't be the case anymore now that Notre Dame has a quality road win upon which to hang its resume.

The 71 points against North Carolina was Notre Dame's lowest point total of the season, but don't let the final score fool you. Thanks to some combination of fatigue from playing a double-overtime game on Saturday and the sheer lack of experience in close road games against quality teams, the Fighting Irish struggled to put the ball in the hoop late in the game.

They scored a grand total of eight points in the final 10 minutes, but that means they scored 63 in the first 30.

Midway through the second half, Notre Dame was on pace to score 84 points against a North Carolina team that has only allowed one opponent to score more than 74 this season—the 84-70 loss to Kentucky.

So, yeah, this offense can travel.

Early in the game, Notre Dame was cutting through North Carolina's defense like a white-hot knife through room-temperature Swiss cheese. On back-to-back possessions in the first half, the Fighting Irish got easy buckets on backdoor cuts when the Tar Heels halfheartedly overcommitted on the perimeter.

Can you really blame North Carolina, though? Notre Dame entered the game shooting 40.4 percent from three-point range as a team and converted on 10 of 23 long-range shots Monday night. Is an uncontested two-pointer really any worse than allowing Notre Dame to attempt an uncontested three-pointer?

Early in the second half, ESPN's Sean McDonough and Shane Battier had this brief exchange on air:

McDonough: "People might have to start evaluating [Notre Dame's] legitimacy as an ACC title contender."

Battier: "Well, they're definitely a dark-horse team. Any team that shoots it this well has a shot to win every single night."

That's what makes Notre Dame so dangerous. With the exception of Zach Auguste, everyone on the court can sink shots from long range. Jerian Grant entered the game as the worst three-point shooter at 35.1 percent, and that won't change for the better after his 0-of-4 night. The other four guys—including sixth man V.J. Beachem—are each making at least 40 percent of their shots from downtown.

Joe Robbins/Getty Images

Notre Dame is sacrificing some height by effectively starting 6'5" Pat Connaughton at power forward, but he is an outstanding rebounder (8.2 per game) and a matchup nightmare for just about every coach in the country.

Imagine needing to figure out how to guard Connaughton with a player who has spent the rest of the season in the paint guarding big men.

Heck, imagine needing to figure out how to guard Notre Dame in general. More or less, here are your defensive options if you're facing the Fighting Irish:

1. Play man-to-man and hope that your power forward can keep up with a 40 percent or better three-point shooter, leaving your center alone on an island to defend Zach Auguste and the inevitable player slashing to the hoop.
2. Match Notre Dame's small-ball lineup by playing four guards in a man-to-man defense and risk getting pummeled on the glass.
3. Play a 2-3 zone and get absolutely destroyed by a barrage of three-pointers.
4. Play a 1-3-1 zone that few coaches even bother to practice.
5. Pray that you'll simply outscore the Fighting Irish.

It's very similar to the blueprint that made Duke so difficult to beat in the ACC for so many years with guys like Ryan Kelly, Kyle Singler, Shane Battier and Christian Laettner playing the stretch 4. Teams that can spread the floor and consistently make you pay for not spreading your defense are the most difficult to beat.

Michael Hickey/Getty Images

At least in that regard, basketball and football aren't all that different, and Grant is one of the best "hardwood quarterbacks" in the nation. Even on a night against the Tar Heels when he couldn't find his stroke, Grant affected the game in other ways with eight assists, four rebounds and a steal that led directly to a fast-break dunk.

The three-point shooters make Notre Dame a threat to beat anyone on any given night—catching fire from beyond the arc might be the closest thing to a recipe for upsetting Kentucky this season—but it's because of Grant that the Irish have one of the most efficient offenses in the nation and the ability to make a deep run in the NCAA tournament.

It was just one season ago that an extremely efficient, three-point shooting offense that played almost no defense whatsoever was considered a legitimate candidate to win the national championship because of an outstanding senior who went on to win the Wooden Award.

Creighton had the third-best adjusted offensive efficiency in the country and a defense that ranked 152nd, according to KenPom.com. The Bluejays earned a No. 3 seed before running into Baylor at the wrong time in the round of 32.

Similarly, Notre Dame currently stands as the second most efficient offense and the 162nd most efficient defense, and it could be well on its way to (at least) a No. 3 seed, depending on how well it traverses the rest of ACC play.

Could Jerian Grant do what Doug McDermott couldn't and lead his team to the Final Four?

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.