'Cuse Top Irish, Bairly
Frank Vitovitch
March 2, 2000

Notre Dame, Ind - Notre Dame came up just short of beatingyet another ranked team Wednesday night when the Orangemen squeaked by the Irish 73-71 infront of a raucous Joyce Center in Notre Dame.  The Irish showed tremendous heart andcame within one moronic action of upsetting another ranked team.

What was the moronic action?  With 8.8 secondsremaining in the game, Ryan Blackwell was fouled and was headed to the line for a one andone.  Blackwell is not a particularly great free throw shooter so odds are he couldhave missed the front end and given Notre Dame the ball with time-outs remaining.  Here's where the moronic action comes in.  After the foul was called, a waterbottle was thrown onto the floor.  It was not the first or second time something wasthrown on the court, so Notre Dame was assessed a technical foul giving Blackwell 4 foulshots and Syracuse the ball.

Blackwell hit two of the four giving the Orangemen a 73-68lead.  Notre Dame's Troy Murphy came down and hit a leaning three pointer to cut thelead to 73-71, but only 0.7 seconds remained and Notre Dame just ran out of time.

For the game to be lost that way is a shame since the Irishbattled back from being down as much as 60-44.   The Irish ended the game on27-13 run.  They did it by getting on fire from three point land.  Both JimmyDillon and Jere Macura were knocking down the three ball.  Dillon made the shot ofthe night when he hit a three pointer well beyond the three point line and well beyondwhat an NBA three pointer would be during the comeback.

Murphy was the team's leading scorer again with 20 points,which is actually 3 points below his season average.  Murphy and the boys displayedtrue heart though in their near win.  They battled back from a large deficit to comewith one technical foul of winning the game.

The loss is potentially huge for Notre Dame.  A winwould have pretty much assured the Irish a tourney spot as about a #12 seed with theirwins over top 25 teams despite their late season slump.  The loss however makes theIrish much less attractive to the selection committee and now the Irish will need a verystrong showing in the up coming Big East Tournament.  If Notre Dame doesn't at leastmake it to the second round they are NIT bound, but if they can get two wins they stillhave a shot, but not as good as if they would have won Wednesday night.

Despite the late season breakdown, the Notre Damebasketball team is headed in the right direction.  The Joyce Center was rocking lastnight and people were on their feet just about every time the ball was brought down fromabout 3 minutes left until the end of the game.  Their was a true big game atmospherein the arena, something that has been lacking in previous years.

Even though the Irish have had trouble with teams theyshould handle easily, they showed they can compete with anyone this year.  MattDoherty should be a lock as Big East Coach of the year with the way he had his boysplaying this season.  Some fans say that the optimism surrounding the bball team is abit much since they lost so many games to lesser opponents, but the fact remains thatNotre Dame has not won this many big games in a long, long time and for that reasonDoherty is my selection as Big East Coach of the year.  Macloed won the award alreadyand I do not think any of his squads beat the quality of team's this year's Irish squadhas.

Go Irish!