Archive for the ‘Notre Dame Basketball’ Category

CBS Sportsline is reporting tonight that Notre Dame assistant Gene Cross will take over the head coaching duties at Toledo.

Notre Dame assistant Gene Cross has reached a deal in principle to take over at Toledo, sources told CBSSports.com on Thursday night.

A formal announcement could come as early as Friday.

An Illinois graduate, Cross has long been considered one of the premier assistants in the country, having worked at Illinois-Chicago, DePaul and Virginia before joining Mike Brey at Notre Dame.

The Toledo Blade has picked up the story as well.

The 36-year-old Cross has received recognition as one of 10 assistant coaches “ready to take the next step” to become a head coach by CBSSportsline.com and also as a top 25 recruiter by Rivals.com.

Cross, who could not be reached for comment last night, has extensive recruiting ties in Chicago. That’s an area UT has had much recruiting success in recently, signing Chicago natives such as Florentino Valencia, Jerrah Young and Tyrone Kent.

He has 12 years of coaching experience at the Division I level and also played at Illinois. Cross has coached at Virginia, DePaul and Illinois-Chicago and got his master’s degree from Ohio State.

Tough loss for the Hoops team, Cross was an excellent assistant on Brey’s staff and will be sorely missed. 

Former Notre Dame great Adrian Dantley was finally elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame Monday.

Dantley will finally be named as an inductee for the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame at ceremonies in San Antonio in conjunction with the NCAA championship game tonight, according to the Rocky Mountain News and Chris Tomasson on Sunday night.

Dantley, an assistant coach with the Denver Nuggets, missed Sunday’s Nuggets game at Seattle to fly to San Antonio after receiving a call from the Hall of Fame.

Late Sunday night, Dantley confirmed in a phone call to the Deseret Morning News that he has indeed made the grade. “Finally got in. Feel pretty good,” he said from San Antonio, where he’d spent the day talking with coaches and other Hall of Fame inductees who will be announced today.

This is long over due for Dantley. Congratulations on a distinction well earned Adrian.

Notre Dame’s Luke Harangody was named a 2nd Team All American on Monday.  He was 6th in the voting - just missing making first team status.

According to the Notre Dame release, Luke is the 9th Notre Dame bballer to be named to the AP’s All American team.

The eight other Notre Dame players who have earned AP All-America include three-time honoree Kevin O’Shea (1948, 1949 and 1950), Tom Hawkins (1958 and 1959), Austin Carr (1970 and 1971), John Shumate (1974), Adrian Dantley (1975 and 1976), Kelly Tripucka (1979), Pat Garrity (1998) and Troy Murphy (2000 and 2001).

Three players have earned honorable mention recognition — Matt Carroll (2003), Chris Thomas (2003 and 2004) and Chris Quinn (2006).

I also came across this interesting piece when looking for news on Luke tonight.  He wrote a diary entry for the NWI Times last week after ND’s loss to Washington State in the 2nd round of the tournament.

The first thing I said to our strength and conditioning coach, Tony Rolinki, when I entered the locker room after the game was “back to work.” I feel that there is so much of my game that I can improve on if I am going to help the team next year. As satisfying as this season was for me personally, I know that I can help this team even more by getting better in several areas.

You have to love an attitude like that.  He struggled in the tournament but you gotta love that his first words were “back to work.”  It’s pretty rare for a conference player of the year like Harnagody to be thinking that and not “where will I get drafted?” when he walks into the locker room after a tourney loss.

Congrats Luke, and here is to an even better season in 2008-09.

Notre Dame failed to advance to the Sweet 16 Saturday night after losing to Washington State 61-41.  The Cougars defense smothered the Irish offense into the single worst offensive performance of the Mike Brey Era.  Notre Dame’s 41 points were 23 points fewer than their previous season low of 64 against Baylor.

Big East rival Marquette went down to Purdue in overtime earlier tonight leaving the Big East 1-2 in second round action today with Pitt still playing against Michigan State.

We’ll have a full recap on the homepage in a bit.

The Big East sent 8 teams to the NCAA Tournament this year and all but one - UConn - have advanced to the second round. Here’s a quick look at how the Big East teams did in Round 1.

• #2 Georgetown def uMBC 66-47
• #3 Louisville def Bosie State 79-61
• #4 Connecticut lost to San Diego 70-69 (OT)
• #4 Pittsburgh def Oral Roberts 82-63
• #5 Notre Dame def George Mason 68-50
• #6 Marquette def Kentucky 74-66
• #7 West Virginia def Arizona 76-65
• #12 Villanova def Clemson 75-69

7-1 in the first round is pretty impressive - especially since UConn lost by just 1 after their star player got hurt in the first half. Most of these games weren’t even close. Georgetown, Notre Dame, Louisville, and Pitt were in control from start to finish of their games.

It will be tough for all 7 Big East teams to advance tot he Sweet 16, but here’s a quick look at who each team faces.

Click here for a quick preview of each Big East team’s 2nd Round matchups

Getting off to a little bit of a late start here, but here goes nothing.

9:53 PM - If Mason keeps doubling down on Harangody, Notre Dame will continue to light it up from outside.

9:55 PM - That said, another 3 for ND from Zeller this time. 17-0 run and 16 point lead.

9:57 PM - This is about as good of a start as we could have hoped for. Mason has been really inconsistent from three point range down the stretch and they are down right COLD to start the game. We’re not giving up many good looks and GM is running down the shot clock on most possessions.

9:59 PM - Damnit, CBS switched coverage, time to load up MMOD…. Still waiting for the stupid Greg Gumble commercial to finish….

10:02 PM - Harangody is ICE COLD from the free throw line so far tonight.

10:03 PM - Did that ball come close to going off Harangody? Didn’t look like it to me.

10:05 PM - Timeout for GM. Things are starting to even out a little bit with the lead still at 16. Mason is still shooting really poorly from the field and the Irish D is really making them work for everything. I realized Marquette is a bit more athletic than Mason, but where was this defense last Thursday?

10:10 PM - Great hustle by Harangody getting the ball out of bounds off of the GM defender. With Mason shooting 20% it would be nice if we could extend this lead a little because they won’t keep shooting this poorly all night.

10:15 PM - Mason finally hits a 3 and gets within 14. ND’s gone cold from the floor over the last couple minutes. We had a real chance to put this one away early, but we’re letting Mason hang around - not really a good thing with a team like Mason. Sid note - NCAA March Madness ‘08 from EA Sports looks pretty cool.

10:19 PM - GM has changed up their D a little bit and the outside isn’t nearly as wide open as it was. Luke is going to need to start taking it to Thomas and use his size advantage.

10:20 PM - Timeout Irish. Mason chipping away and now only down 12. We will have missed a GOLDEN opportunity if we let Mason pull within single digits before the half.

10:22 PM - Is “The Godfather” from the WWF the George Mason mascot? Anyway, up 12 at half-time, but should be up a lot more. Mason was shooting 20% for most of the first half but are still within striking distance - not good. After a really hot shooting start, we’ve gone cold from the outside and Harangody hasn’t been able to get much going down low. Thomas is doing a good job keeping him in check. Brey needs to find a way to get the ball inside to Harangody early in the second half.

10:32 PM - In other action, Wisconsin clings to a 2 point lead over Cal State Fulerton. Thanks Badgers, they are the team I pulled in a work pool where you only get 1 team and win the pool if they win it. Does Wisconsin ever do anything in the Tourney??? And how about Washington State? They held Winthrop to 11 freaking points in the second half and put up 70 which is above their season average. Winthrop is a pretty decent offensive team so a potential matchup with Wazzou is looking tough if we hold on here.

10:45 PM - Nice start to the 2nd half. Fast break bucket by Harangody and then a HUGE rejection by Hillesland and then another nice block by Kurz.

10:47 PM - Mason really can’t buy a three pointer tonight. They haven’t even been close on most of them.

10:48 PM - Maybe its the audio on this online feed, but it seems like theres about 7 or 8 people at the game who “thrilled” to be there.

10:50 PM - Irish offense is starting to get going again and these Coke Zero commercials are starting to get pretty annoying. As are the Sonic commercials, but that’s only because to anyone in the Northeast, Sonic doesn’t exist. It’s just a made up place that has a lot of commercials.

10:55 PM - Pretty sloppy ball handling so far in the second half. Meanwhile, Tory Jackson starts to take over with a big block and then a drive down the court ending with a dish to ‘Gody for a dunk. How the hell wasn’t he even a Honorable Mention for All Big East this year? And on cue, Jackson makes a sick no look pass to Luke…. if only Luke was looking for it.

11:00 PM - Harangody is settling for jumpers too easily. He outweighs Thomas by at least 20 lbs and needs to take it inside more. Thomas is the only offensive threat for Mason tonight - if Luke were to get him in foul trouble, it would be over.

11:07 PM - Up 19 now at 55-36 and looking GOOD. Mason probably has one more run left in them, but if we can weather that, this one looks to be in hand.

11:12 PM - Too many offensive rebounds for Mason the last couple of minutes. Both teams look like they are getting fatigued.

11:23 PM - Smart play by Ayers passing up the wide open 3 that early in the shot clock. ND ran an additional 20-25 seconds off the clock because of it. Very smart play. Kind of like the opposite of Darius Walker running out of bounds on the final drive against USC in 2005.

11:28 PM - I have yet to see a commercial for the Pontiac G8 that doesn’t make me want to run out and buy one immediately. If you guys could click on some banners and buy some hats and jerseys so that happens sooner, that would be great.

11:35 PM - Irish win.  I randomly get shown a G8 ad during the Mike Brey post game interview.  Marketing works too well on me.

Here’s a couple pics from yesterday’s open practice in Denver courtesy of Colorado Irish.  Another pic from the shoot around after the jump

While I was on Sporting News earlier tonight reading the articles I quoted below I saw a “Simulate the Tournament” link so I simulated the East Bracket. On the first attempt, without any refreshing, or anything like that, Sporting News simulated Notre Dame to the Final 4 with wins over Mason, Winthrop, North Carolina, and Louisville along the way.

Before anyone gets too excited though, the same “BracketCaster” simulated Gonzaga over Notre Dame in the Semis and then the Zags over Texas for the title.

Sporting News has an article up talking about the possibility of George Mason making another run in this year’s tourney.  Here’s an excerpt:

The Patriots, meanwhile, are trying to act like underdogs even though a lot of people expect them to win. They’re trying to act like they haven’t been here before, even though they have.

Heading into the tournament, Larranaga got advise from Bob Rotella, the famous sports psychologist, who he termed a “very, very good friend” of his.

“He said, “Listen, your whole focus, your whole team’s focus has to be relax and enjoy the journey. Have fun with it. Don’t be uptight. … You have everything to gain and nothing to lose,”‘ Larranaga said. “He said, “If you go in with that mind set, I think your guys will play great.”‘

Another article on TSN basically picks the Irish to win though…

George Mason might be a popular pick on a lot of brackets this year, but the fact remains Notre Dame has more depth and enters the game with a desire to prove they are more than a Big East flameout. The Patriots lost four of seven games before winning the Colonial title. They can’t afford a let down of any sort.

Notre Dame got a 5th seed in the East Bracket and will face off against everyone’s favorite Cinderella, 12th seeded George Mason.  A win over Marquette Thursday would have likely meant a 4 seed for the Irish.  We’ll have more to follow including details on this year’s Tournament Pool.