Getting in the tourny is the first step, there is ultimately a lot of luck that goes with being good in something like the tournament.
No qluestion luck, such as playing 2 teams that just lost a key player the game beore, is involved. But getting in the tourney a lot helps increase the odds.
Yup, exactly. I mean you can look at both our more recent elite 8 runs in 2010 and 2018. If that foul was called correctly on Clemente instead of Merriweather, we walk out of that S16 game w/o having to go into OT. Makes for a less fun overall game, but then we aren't gassed vs Butler, and who knows, we make that run to the Champ game instead of them.
Or 2018, having UVA bounced by UMBC was enormous luck, and then we got past Kentucky in a great game, but then planted vs Loyola. That was another chance we could've used to get to the FF, and who knows what happens.
Now, it's pretty obvious 2010 team was better than 2018, but really you just gotta be the best team (with luck) through 6 games in 3 weekends, so who knows what would happen.
But it all starts with making the tourny consistently, once that happens, you generally got the "are we good" box checked and then it's a dose of luck after that. It'd be interesting to see but I doubt
any program that goes to the tourny on a regular basis, even if they aren't elite doesn't at least have deep tourny runs, hell, we literally have done that this last decade.
