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Brey: That's More Like It!
UHND.com - Alan Tieuli - Used courtesy of IrishEyes.com
1/31/2002
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(IE) – For those of you who only
tune in to basketball when football season ends, this is what Mike Brey’s team looked like in November and
early December.
Ignore the fact that Notre Dame
entered Wednesday night’s game versus Pittsburgh ranked 13th (out of 14
teams) in Big East scoring. Forget that the
Irish were 13th in field goal percentage, 12th in three-point
shooting and 14th in rebounding margin.
Dismiss the notion that the team
– built on a foundation of senior leadership – was crumbling under the weight of
expectations.
Be a glass-half full kind of
person, instead, and dwell on this. It was
Notre Dame 89, 21st ranked Pittsburgh 76, and the Irish shot better than any
team in Big East Conference history. In a
true crossroads game, the Irish looked more than capable again of turning down the rosy
path to the NCAA Tournament rather than toward the lower-class NIT neighborhood.
Playing before a near full-house
at the Joyce Center, Notre Dame hardly looked like a team with a lowly 60 rating in the
RPI. The Irish hit a phenomenal 21 shots in
31 tries in the first-half in opening a mind-numbing 49-21 advantage. The Irish had runs of 17-0 and 13-1 in building
that margin against a Pittsburgh team that entered allowing only 62.2 points per contest
in league play.
The 89 points was the third most
Notre Dame has ever scored in Big East play. The
Irish made 34-of-51 field goals for marksmanship of 66.7, the most accurate shooting in
Big East annals. St. John’s had held the
record, hitting 66.0-percent against Virginia Tech last season.
How different a basketball team
can look when its shots are drawing nylon rather than iron.
“I wanted to see us get down
the floor a little bit more,” said Brey. “I didn’t want it to be a
half-court game, like it has been.”
Ryan
Humphrey hit
seven-of-10 shots in the first-half and finished with 17 points, fouling out in the
process. Freshman Chris Thomas dranined four-of-five in the
opening session and dominated his elder rival Brandin Knight, for a half at least. He ended
with 19 points and eight assists. David Graves, like he did so well the
second-half of the 2001 season, came off the bench with nine first-half points and
finished with 19, including six-of-six free throws.
“Chris got us moving early,
we got some easy baskets, the bench got involved, and it snowballed,” said Brey.
“That’s more like it.”
Harold
Swanagan (eight
points, seven rebounds) was back setting his killer screens and it showed in the Notre
Dame shooting percentages. The Irish entered
making just 38-percent of their Big East shots. Brey
was ecstatic with 13 assists in 21 first-half baskets, a sure sign of precise ball
movement.
The Irish are now 14-6 overall,
4-3 in the Big East. Pittsburgh, the
early-season darling coast-to-coast, drops to 18-4 overall, 6-3 in the Big East. Notre Dame has swept the Panthers and would hold a
tiebreaker edge if the teams ended up tied in the West Division at season’s end. Brey’s team is just one game in the loss
column behind first-place Syracuse with winnable games against Seton Hall and Rutgers on
the immediate agenda.
Notre Dame opened this season with
seven straight blow out victories and looked more athletic than any Irish unit since the
halcyon days of Digger Phelps.
But when the schedule turned tougher, Brey’s group struggled, winning
just six of 12 while looking progressively slower and more vulnerable on offense.
“We’re
excited tonight, but they’ll be no parties thrown, just like we weren’t jumping
off buildings last week,” Brey said. “We got to stay even keel and get over to
Seton Hall.
“We tie ourselves up in knots sometimes because we want it so bad,” Brey continued. “I want us playing loose and confident. We weathered some injuries and line-up changes well and now we’re ready to go.”
Sophomore Torrian Jones – starting in place of Graves for the second straight game – hit a three on Notre Dame’s third possession and the Irish did little wrong the rest of the first-half. By the seven-minute mark, six different ND players had scored, the hosts had nailed nine-of-11 shots and the lead was 20-4. The Panthers never got closer than 12 the rest of the way though they did play maniacal second-half defense, getting down in a defensive stance down 30 like the game was on the line. Good coaching.
Matt Carroll missed practice Tuesday with a flu bug and spent all that night in the student infirmary getting hydrated. He hit his first three three-point attempts and finished with 15 points.
“We may strap him up to that IV Saturday night, just for luck before Seton Hall,” joked Brey.
The largest Notre Dame lead was 61-30 before Pittsburgh made it respectable, maybe a little more so. Thomas picked a good time to have the worst half of his Irish career, turning the ball over six times in a miserable second-half. A good learning experience in a blow-out victory.
Pittsburgh – perhaps worn out after beating Georgetown twice and Syracuse over an eight-day period – was led by Knight’s 20 points and 15 from Jaron Brown. The final score was the closest the Panthers ever got.
-0-
THE
NOTEBOOK: Notre Dame’s
two largest Big East margin of victories entering this contest were 23 points – 87-64
over Pittsburgh at home on January 5, 1999 and 77-54 at Georgetown in the last regular
season game of the Matt Doherty Year, March 4, 2000…..The
most points an ND team has scored in Big East play? John MacLeod’s penultimate team beat Rutgers,
91-78, on Jan. 11, 1998……..With 11:38 left, the Irish led 65-38, had made
28-of-41 shots (68-percent), no player had
made less than half of his shots and Tom
Timmermans and
Swanagan were a combined five-for-five. “We’re certainly very happy with Tom
Timmermans,” said Brey. “We like
the rotation we have now.”…....This was the most points surrendered by
Pittsburgh this season. Boston College
notched 74 in a 77-74 loss to the Panthers in Chestnut Hill earlier this month….With
one more victory, Notre Dame will guarantee a winning record in the regular season and
(theoretically) a spot in the NIT. With the
balance in the power conferences this year, it would appear 20 wins (before the Big East
Tournament) would be a must to earn an at-large NCAA berth.
The Irish would need to go 6-3 in their final nine to get there…..The
Irish made 15-of-21 free throws after making just 58-percent in its last six games.
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