That’s what rock bottom looks like for Notre Dame men’s basketball.
Or at least head coach Micah Shrewsberry has to hope it doesn’t get any worse than Wednesday night’s 97-74 home loss to SMU. Three days after Shrewsberry knocked over a microphone and stormed out of his postgame press conference, his team showed even less fire than he did during his frustrated rant.
This performance in Purcell Pavilion was so much worse than Sunday’s 75-60 loss to Louisville. The Mustangs (20-6, 11-4 ACC), who played without leading scorer Boopie Miller, trounced Notre Dame (11-15, 5-10) from the start.
SMU jumped out to a 6-0 lead in one minute and 42 seconds, which led to Shrewsberry’s first timeout. Notre Dame got on the board 13 seconds later with a 3-pointer by forward Tae Davis, but SMU simply responded with a 9-0 run. The Mustangs led by 20 just 20 seconds past the halfway mark of the first half. The lead ballooned to 25 twice in the first half, including at halftime following a buzzer beater by SMU’s Chuck Harris.
SMU made 72.4% of its shots from the field (21-of-29) in the first half. Meanwhile, the Irish had more turnovers (eight) than made field goals.
“We didn't come out ready to go,” said Notre Dame sophomore guard Braeden Shrewsberry. “Just playing lazy. We weren't playing tough, weren't competing. Just everything wasn't going the right way for us. That’s on us.”
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For the last two days, per Micah Shrewsberry, the word “urgency” was written on the team’s whiteboard. Rarely has a team shown less of what was demanded. Maybe the letters weren’t large enough.
“We're all in this together,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “We win together. We lose together. And that's a big part of it. They're taking their cues from me.
“Maybe I need to change what we're doing in practice. Maybe I need to change what we're doing in shootaround or whatever it is. We can't come out like this. We can't come out like this. It's new territory, so I need to figure out what it is, why it is that we started this way, because we haven't done this.
“We've been in games. We've played well. We've started well. We may not score the ball. Maybe we haven't gotten stops, but it's like 8-6, 6-4. We've been in it. And right from the start, we just didn't have that look in our eyes.”
Micah Shrewsberry was so desperate to start the second half that he left star guard Markus Burton, who was averaging 21.3 points per game ahead of Wednesday’s game, on the bench. Burton returned to the floor with 14:55 remaining in the second half while the Irish still trailed by 25 points.
“You get to that point right there in this game, you’re just throwing stuff at the wall and see what sticks,” Shrewsberry said. “The five guys that we started (in the second half), I thought they did a pretty good job in the first half. So now let's keep rolling with that group. Maybe they weren't in together, but at different times, and maybe they can spur us to something. We were just hoping for some kind of juice and some kind of energy. I thought maybe those five guys could provide it.”
That group also excluded starting forward Kebba Njie, who was benched for the entire second half. He registered two fouls, one turnover and no other stats in 9:37 on the court. That Njie was a no-show on the glass certainly didn’t help the Irish, who eventually were outrebounded 43-20.
Though Burton played nearly nine minutes in the second half, he remained highly ineffective. He finished the game with four turnovers, three assists, two points and one steal.
The only other time Burton scored fewer than 15 points in a game this season was when he scored two points in three minutes against Rutgers before a knee injury hat kept him sidelined for more than a month forced him out of the game. Burton’s previous career low in a game with regular minutes was six points in a loss to Miami in December of his freshman season.
Without Burton’s scoring, Braeden Shrewsberry led the way with 21 points for the Irish, which was his highest output since scoring 22 against Dartmouth on Dec. 11. Davis added 13, and freshman forward Garrett Sundra matched his career high with 11 points.
But those point totals were meaningless in a game the Irish trailed by as many as 34 points in the second half. The 24-point loss was the most lopsided home result in Micah Shrewsberry’s Notre Dame tenure and the largest margin of defeat this season. The Irish lost by 21 points at Georgia on Dec. 3 earlier this season.
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Notre Dame lost in lopsided manners on several occasions last season, including a 33-point loss at North Carolina, a 24-point loss to Auburn in Brooklyn, N.Y., and a 20-point loss at home to The Citadel. But no team scored 90 points against the Irish last season. Only Boston College, which scored 94 in a three-point loss to the Irish in double overtime last week, had surpassed 90 points against Notre Dame in Shrewsberry’s tenure prior to SMU.
“Last year's team, there might have been times like Carolina and a couple other places where we just got blown out,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “We were less talented than other people, but we continued to fight. We continued to scratch. We continued to claw. But this was the first time I haven't seen this group have that same fight at the start.”
After Shrewsberry expressed confidence in his coaching ability following Sunday’s loss to Louisville, he wondered Wednesday if the Irish are dealing with an overconfidence problem despite losing five of their last six games.
“Confidence is a crazy thing,” Shrewsberry said. “Maybe we believe in ourselves too much, because last year’s team knew that if we didn’t scrap, if we didn’t claw, if we didn’t hold people to 50 points, then we had zero chance. I’ve done a poor job defensively with this group from the start that we don’t have that same grittiness and toughness and identity.”
With five games left in the regular season, the Irish are not yet guaranteed a spot in this year’s ACC Tournament, which will include the top 15 of the conference’s 18 teams. The Irish sit in 14th place with two more ACC wins than Boston College (16th) and NC State (17th).
Shrewsberry will stress the importance of finishing the season with a purpose, because some of Notre Dame’s players will be playing their final college basketball games. Like Princeton graduate transfer Matt Allocco, who played nearly 19 scoreless minutes off the bench Wednesday after a four-game absence with a wrist injury.
“The clock is ticking. Matt Allocco’s emotional in the timeouts, because he's playing through injury because he wanted to come back and fight for these guys,” Shrewsberry said. “[Julian] Roper and JR [Konieczny] and how they're fighting. They're trying. They're giving everything they got. Even Nikita [Konstantynovskyi] with the fouls just trying to battle and give everything you got.
“Rick Pitino said it the other day. You flip that hourglass over, and it's almost running out. It's almost running out on some people's careers. If I'm a freshman, I'm a sophomore, whatever, I'm not thinking about the end. I’m thinking about this season, and I got next year. I got this and that. But these guys might not have another practice. They might not have another game. You gotta give everything you got for those guys. You gotta think outside yourself and think about those guys. Because as their seasons end, their careers end, it means you're one step closer to yours doing the same exact thing.”
As the Irish have struggled this month, freshman guard Sir Mohammed made the first five starts of his career. He’s showing bittersweet signs of progress, such as no turnovers in each of the past three games. Mohammed contributed eight points, two assists and two rebounds Wednesday.
“It’s been great playing, but it doesn’t really matter if we’re not getting the end result as a team,” Mohammed said. “So, we just gotta put it all together. Hopefully, I can keep getting better and try to help these guys out a little bit more. But I don’t care that I’m starting or not. We need to get some wins.”
The Irish were so displeased with their performance Wednesday that both Shrewsberrys issued apologies.
“I just want to apologize to all the former players and all the fans that are staying with us in our corner,” Braeden Shrewsberry said. “That’s on us. This shit will never happen again, so I’m sorry about that.”
Micah Shrewsberry even shared a similar message to former ND great LaPhonso Ellis, who attended Wednesday’s loss.
“That ain’t Notre Dame basketball,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “What we’re doing now and what we have now, it all comes from what they did. And for us to not compete is a slap in their face. I apologize to those guys that put in the blood, sweat and tears for this program. The fans that are still out there fighting for us, I apologize to them, because that there, that’s not Notre Dame basketball. That’s what I said.
“This is rock bottom, because it ain’t gonna be like this anymore. I need five guys and all my timeouts. That’s it.”
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