SOUTH BEND, Ind. – Someday Carey Booth will take complete control of a college basketball game.
It may not be this season as a rail-thin, 6-foot-10, 203-pound, 18-year-old freshman, but the inside-outside skills he flashed at Purcell Pavilion on Saturday afternoon, leave little doubt about the high ceiling for the Englewood, Colo. product.
Those skills just weren’t enough this time to push a rebuilt, freshman-led Notre Dame (1-1) team over the top against a talented, experienced-laden Western Carolina (2-0) team that had answers down the stretch to head back to Cullowhee, N.C., with a 71-61 win.
It was the first ever meeting between the two schools.
“Now we've played two teams (Niagara on Monday) with a game plan … These dudes are trying to take away what we (want to) do two games in a row, and I gotta help our guys,“ first-year head coach Micah Shrewsberry said.
“Western Carolina was a really good team. I thought they executed and played really hard. I thought our guys showed tremendous fight in the second half…. (But) I’ve gotta be better and help our guys — you know there's moments where they need me, and I let them down.“
More time together should eventually help, but in the meantime there’s not a lot of continuity to the offense. Booth was the bright spot, nailing 4-of-8 3-point shots to rally the Irish, and he finished with 20 points in 24 minutes of play.
The Catamounts’ game plan was to frustrate the guards and make the Irish bigs beat them.
“I’ve got to find a way to free those guys up for better looks,“ Shrewsberry said of his guards.
They got harassed with the Catamounts’ older, stronger guards.
Freshman Braeden Shrewsberry went 0-for-7, including six rushed attempts from behind the arc.
Freshman Markus Burton, who saved the Irish with a 29-point effort in the opener against Niagara, had 17 Saturday, but went 6-for-15 from the field and 1-for-4 from 3-point range, along with committing five of Notre Dame’s 12 turnovers, in 30 minutes.
“We just wanted to make it tough on him and keep him in front of us,“ Western Carolina’s third-year coach Justin Gray said of containing the 5-11, 166-pound Burton. “If he was going to score, he was going to have to go over us.
“If they were going to beat us, their bigs were going to have to make shots.“
It doesn’t help that an Irish offense fumbling for an identity is missing 6-10 starting forward Kebba Njie.
Njie suffered a right hand injury on Nov. 4 and missed the opener vs. Niagara. The injury is not expected to be long-term, and Njie could return as early as next Thursday against Auburn.
He was missed against Western Carolina, which had 13 offensive rebounds and an overall 43-38 edge on the boards, along with providing another big to help with the inside-outside movement.
“We're really stagnant right now,“ Shrewsberry said of the offense. “We're not moving the ball at all. (With) 19 assists in two games, we're not gonna beat anybody. We're playing ISO (isolation) ball right now, and we're doing that way too much. But part of it is how people are guarding us, too.
“They're not allowing us to move the ball from side to side. They're denying every single one of our guards and our wings and making it tough for them to get the ball in there, forcing our bigs to make plays and make decisions. And we're not good at attacking that quite yet.“
Booth, coming off a 10-point, nine-rebound effort against Niagara, is trying.
In one extended stretch, starting with eight minutes to play and the Irish trailing 55-46, Booth energized the smallish crowd of 5,742 with a scoring binge.
It started with a couple of free throws ahead of a Tae Davis drive for a layup, and was followed by three straight Booth 3-pointers, the last at 4:48 to bring the Irish to within three with still four and half minutes to play (60-57). This after the deficit had reached 17 early in the second half.
“I thought, two games in a row, he's played pretty good,“ Shrewsberry said of Booth. “He's done some good things. … He's a hard worker. He's one of the first guys in the gym every single day, comes in and gets extra work, right? And so like, he's not a guy that's gonna be satisfied – he wants more, he expects more. But he's also a freshman. There's good days, and bad days happen. But if he keeps working the way that he does, the way that he has, he's gonna be OK.“
The run that Booth fueled suddenly lost energy after a Davis layup at the 3:45 mark, and Western Carolina’s veteran leader, 6-6 senior Vonterius Woolbright, took over.
The preseason pick for the Southern Conference’s Player of the Year, who had 19 points in the season-opening win over Dalton State, scored 10 straight points – 6-for-6 from the line – from 3:21 to 1:05, while the Irish offense went into sleep mode.
Burton airballed a 3-attempt at 2:54, and a 3-point attempt by Booth bounced out at 2:13. A layup attempt by Burton rolled around and out at 1:32, and Shrewsberry missed a 3-point attempt at 1:08.
Western Carolina’s next offensive trip produced a couple more Woolbright free throws for a 70-59 edge.
Overall, Notre Dame had defended Woolbright well. He was just 5-for-20 from the field for the game, but at clutch time, when the Irish had to foul, the ball was in his hands. He hit 11 of 12 from the line for the game, and the Catamounts, picked to finish as high as second in the league, committed just seven turnovers.
They shot 39% from the field (7-for-21 on 3s) for the game to Notre Dame’s 38% (8-for-26 on threes.
Russell Jones Jr., a 5-8 senior guard and one of three Catamounts named to the All-Southern Conference preseason first team, had 20 points on 8-for-11 shooting, and took advantage of some slow perimeter defense from the Irish to go 4-for-6 from 3-point range.
For Notre Dame, 6-4 junior Julian Roper II, the Detroit product and transfer from Northwestern, had 12 points, going 2-for-4 on 3s, and finished with a team-high eight rebounds.
Notre Dame’s youth will get a big test when it meets Auburn at 9 p.m. (ESPN2) Thurday in the Legends Classic in Brooklyn, N.Y. A match against Oklahoma State or St. Bonaventure will follow on Friday, with the tip time to be determined.
“I think it always comes into play, especially early in the season,“ Shrewsberry said of the experience factor. “There's a trust factor that's built in with a team that's played together and has executed their system for a long time. At times, we have that trust factor. And other times, we don't, because we haven't done it.
“That’s why teams get better towards the end of the year, because that trust factor starts to come in, that I know, if I do my job, somebody's gonna do their job behind me and cover for me. And now there were a few opportunities where we just weren't doing that. So that's where probably the experience comes in.
“They've seen different things (Catamounts). They've seen different actions. They know how to guard different things. And they can talk to each other and figure it out. We can't talk to each other and figure it out right now, just because there's dudes out there that haven't done it together.“
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