By Tom Coyne
The Associated Press

SOUTH BEND, Ind. - Take a quick glance at the West bracket of the NCAA tournament and one school appears out of place.

On one side of the bracket there's Duke, with three NCAA titles and 13 Final Four appearances, and Kansas, with two NCAA titles and 11 Final Four appearances. On the other side, there's Arizona, with one national title and three Final Four appearances.

Then there's Notre Dame. No national titles, one Final Four appearance - and the Irish finished fourth in that tournament in 1978.

So there Note Dame sits, a football school stuck among basketball powers. Irish coach Mike Brey, though, has no doubt the Irish belong with those heavyweight basketball programs.

"Certainly they've done it a little longer than us, but I think if you ask around the country now we're certainly a force to be reckoned with," Brey said Monday. "We're on people's minds as one of the top college basketball programs."

The Irish (24-9) are making their third straight NCAA tournament - the only Big East team to accomplish that feat - and have a cumulative record of 66-30 during that span.

Of the 16 teams left in the NCAA tournament, the Irish (24-9) have played seven, including two games each against Pitt (28-4) and Syracuse (26-5). The Irish went 4-5 in those games, including beating Marquette (25-5), Maryland (21-9) and Texas (24-6) in the span of a week.

Irish guard Matt Carroll said those games, along with a tough Big East schedule, prepared Notre Dame for the NCAA tournament.

"We realize we can beat any team in the country any given day. That's why we're playing with so much confidence right now," he said.

That's a feeling Notre Dame has not experienced in a long time. When the Irish were passed over for the NCAA tournament with a 22-15 record three years ago during Carroll's freshman season, it was the 10th straight season Notre Dame had missed the tournament.

Carroll remembers the Irish being awed that season when they were in the Preseason NIT with such teams as Arizona, Kentucky and Maryland.

"Things have changed. I've seen this program evolve from then to now. Back then we were in awe. It was the first time we've been in that territory," he said. "The difference now is, we're there."

He points out the Irish were ranked as high as No. 5 this season and that they gave top-ranked Duke a scare in the second round of the NCAA tournament last year.

"This year it's just a different mindset. We believe we're one of the top programs in the country, one of the best teams in the country," he said. "We're going in there to win this game. We're going in there to beat Arizona even though no one is picking us to win."

When the brackets were announced last week, a lot of people talked about how tough the West bracket was. Notre Dame wasn't mentioned in a lot in those discussions, however.

"They talked about Arizona, Duke, Kansas, Illinois. They stopped at the No. 5 seed," Brey said. "I heard a lot of people talking about Creighton and Memphis as upsets."

Brey, though, liked the bracket from the beginning because of the types of teams that were not there.

"There wasn't the Pittsburgh, Kentucky bulk in our bracket. Now we've got three fabulous basketball teams and programs out there, but they're not the big bangers we've had problems with," he said. "I thought we matched up better."

Brey will find out Thursday night how good he is at picking his bracket.