Notre Dame Basketball Highlights: Young Irish Upset Bid Falls Short
Notre Dame vs. North Carolina: Coby White scored 17 points and Nassir Little added 11 points in the second half as the No. 13 Tar Heels held off Notre Dame, 75-69. John Mooney scored 16 points and pulled down 19 rebounds for the Fighting Irish in the loss. The young Fighting Irish led this one at half time and hung with the more talented Tar Heels for much of the game, but inexperience kicked in down the stretch as the Irish faded.
Despite the loss, it was encouraging to see Notre Dame’s young roster hang with the 12th ranked Tar Heels until the end as they show signs of a promising future. TJ Gibbs played at less than 100 percent after being sick and missing Saturday’s win over Boston College. The effects of that illness showed as Gibbs hit just 1 of 9 shots on the night. He still managed to gut out 35 minutes though.
Notre Dame returns to action on Saturday back on their home court against another top 25 opponent – #17 NC State. Tip Off is set for 2:00 with the game being broadcast on the ACC Network.
Hubb has been playing better. If they can get Hubb, Gibbs, Mooney, and Harvey playing well at the same time more consistently they’ll win some games. I think that brining Pflueger back was a mistake. He’s going to slow the progress of one of the younger players. I think that Brey has a blind spot with him and that’s part of the reason Matt Ryan transferred. Ryan could have really helped this program last year and this. He was playing much better and doing what was expected when Brey sent a clear message by not playing him in the second half of the West Virginia NCAA Tournament game while VJ Beach disappeared and stunk the joint out.
Brey did this before when he decided to red shirt Cam Biedscheid even after Grants was ruled academically ineligible. Going with Tom Knight and Garrick Sherman instead which clogged up the middle and went contrary to his 4 around 1 philosophy. That’s why they had such a bad inaugural season in the ACC.
It was good to see the Irish hang with UNC and not let them take the game out of reach for the most part. The biggest problem I see is consistency. They get good drives going, but then get into a rut. Every time you think they’ve got it together in a game and they go on a run, it comes to a screeching halt.
If they can get better at them some of these L’s can turn into W’s. They’re not getting blown out in most of their losses.
Sadly, though, I think this year is definitely a down year. Hopefully they can come out of ACC play with a winning records at least, that would be nice. But I don’t expect any deep ACC playoff run or any NCAA tournaments for the Irish this year (though they’d likely be a 1st or 2nd round exit anyway).