ACC Tournament: SMU falls to Louisville, now awaits NCAA Tournament fate

SMU led into the final 90 seconds in its second-round ACC Tournament game with Louisville, but the Mustangs went scoreless for the final 2:43 in what turned into a 62-58 loss on Wednesday.

And now, for SMU, and its coach, Andy Enfield, it’s time to play: the waiting game.

“We’ll probably just get the guys in the weight room and do some shooting and keep them sharp. But other than that, some rest and some homework. Probably some tests and some papers they have to follow up on,” said Enfield, whose Mustangs (20-13) have lost five of their last six, most of that without 6’3” senior guard BJ Edwards (12.7 ppg, 5.9 rebounds/g, 4.9 assists/g, 47.4% FG, 37.2% 3FG), who has missed the last five games with an ankle injury suffered in the Cal game, a 73-69 loss on Feb. 25.

At that point, SMU was 19-8, and an NCAA Tournament lock.

Now …

“I can’t say a lock,” Enfield said. “We feel very confidently that because of our schedule strength, and the ACC was so outstanding this year, every game we played was a battle. And all the statistics that I just gave you, we feel very strongly that we deserve to be in. But it’s not our decision, and we just hope that they look at the entire schedule and what happened.”

At this writing, SMU (20-13) is still a healthy 37 in the NET, but the average computer ranking is 47.1, which is probably below where you want to be in terms of at-large resume.

No bad losses, but just a 4-9 record in Quad 1 games, and a 5-4 record in Quad 2s.

Enfield used his postgame presser to make his case:

“First of all, we scheduled very difficult. Last year, the SEC was the number one conference in college basketball, so we made a decision to play four SEC teams on the road in December, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. Four in a row against the SEC, and none of them were at home.

“We played at Big East team. We beat Texas A&M, neutral court, by 13, when they had their full roster and (Mackenzie) Mgbako was still playing. We beat North Carolina by 14 when they had Caleb Wilson. We beat Louisville by 10 with Mikel Brown, and we had a lot of other great wins throughout the season.

“We have enough Quad 1 wins. Our NET is in the mid-30s, and our offense has been top 20, was top 10 in the country before the injury. I think as far as our schedule strength, the fact that we scheduled four SEC teams in a row, none at home, and have those quality Quad 1 and Quad 2 game wins, that our resume is probably better than some of the other teams in that area with where our NET is right now.”