It will be shown how  the  non-relativistic quark model,  with both flavor dependent and flavor independent effective quark-quark interactions, matches  to the $1/N_c$ quark operator basis.  Analytic expressions in terms of radial  integrals are obtained for the $1/N_c$ operator coefficients. Several new,  parameter free relations between the masses and the two mixing angles of the negative parity $L=1$ excited baryons will be presented.  They can discriminate between quark-quark interactions with different spin-flavor structures.
Within the present experimental uncertainties, consistency with the best values of the mixing angles, as determined by a recent global fit to masses and decays, does not exclude any of the two most extreme possibilities of flavor dependent (independent) quark-quark interactions, as generated by pion (gluon) exchange models.