It's not rocket science, and I've also rarely missed in my predictions since the inception of pairwise. He went out on a limb by making attendance moves. These are purely discretionary.
I don't think anyone's upset about Niagara. I would love to have Quinnipiac and Canisius as well, and Notre Dame winning creates that bracket. Only way it doesn't happen in that scenario is selection committee bias/ manipulation under guise of raising attendance.