Dane Goodwin lifts Notre Dame past Lipscomb
SOUTH BEND – He had the big day.
So, hey, why not finish it off with the game’s biggest shot?
In a frantic final 30 seconds in what’s likely to wind up as one of the more peculiar games of Notre Dame’s men’s basketball season, the Irish found a way to escape Lipscomb, 66-65, in Purcell Pavilion Friday night.
With his legs still under him after playing 40 minutes, grad student Dane Goodwin drilled a wing 3-pointer – his sixth 3 of the night in eight attempts – with 14 seconds to play, igniting the Joyce Center crowd of 6,552 and giving the Irish (4-0) that one-point edge.
“I don't even remember who passed it to me to be honest,” said Goodwin, who finished with a team-high 24 points, three off his career high, on 9-for-13 shooting and received the pass from fellow guard Cormac Ryan, for the record.
“I knew one of us needed to hit a big shot. On any given night it could be any of us. I kind of keyed in on that today, just being ready to shoot wherever it was on the floor, and I think that mindset kind of helped me a little bit, so I think I was definitely ready to shoot (when the pass from Ryan came his way).”
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Still, 14 seconds remained, and a crowd holding its collective breath knew the odds weren’t good against a team that had carved up the Irish to a stunning 76% percent shooting show (19-for-25) in the second half.
What the Bisons didn’t have on their side was time. Their patient offense probes and delivers multiple passes – “They’re a better passing team than we are right now,” acknowledged Irish coach Mike Brey – until they wear a defense down or find a mismatch.
And there wasn’t enough time for that.
The Bisons passed on a timeout and raced up the floor.
“I just didn't want to call a timeout because I thought he (Brey) goes to a zone and I just didn't want to get the game stopped,” Lipscomb coach Lennie Acuff said. “And I thought we had an advantage at that spot.”
And the Bisons of the Atlantic Sun Conference (ASUN) might have, had Notre Dame’s 6-foot-10 Nate Laszewski not switched off on 6-3 guard Derrin Boyd near the free throw line. This mismatch worked to ND’s favor.
With time running out and unable to find, or see, anyone around Laszewski, Boyd lofted a shot in the 12-foot range from the left side of the lane. It fell high off the rim and landed in the hands of Lipscomb’s Matthew Schner.
But before he could get off a putback in traffic, the horn sounded.
“I thought it was a great college basketball game,” said Acuff. “Obviously, I’m disappointed the way it ended, but give them credit, they made two big shots.”
The second of the big Irish shots came from Ryan on a 15-footer with 1:43 to play that tied the game at 63.
Lipscomb pounded the Irish mercilessly in the paint, 42-22 by the time it was finished, and used that roadmap to take the lead in the second half after the Irish had run out to an 11-point lead in the first half and six-point lead (29-23) at the half.
Lipscomb isn’t a particularly tall team, but the 6-5 Schner had eight rebounds to lead a 32-24 edge on the boards, and 6-7 Jacob Ognacevic had 14 of his 19 points around the bucket in the second half.
Trae Benham, a 6-3 sophomore guard, had the hot hand early with 10 points in the first 6 ½ minutes, and finished off a four-point play to give the Bisons a 63-61 lead with 2:11 to play, before Ryan evened things at the 1:43 mark.
On the next Lipscomb possession Boyd found an edge in the lane for a short jumper to produce a 65-63 Bisons lead.
That was followed by a miss on a drive to the bucket by Notre Dame’s Trey Wertz, who had his toughest outing to date (3-for-9 shooting, 2-for-7 from 3-point range, 11 points and two turnovers).
Boyd then missed a 3-point attempt to set up Goodwin’s heroics.
“Dane has a game like tonight, you know, you just figure that last shot’s going in,” said Brey, who was coaching on the 23-year anniversary of his Notre Dame debut — a 40-point plus win over Sacred Heart with Troy Murphy leading the way.
“But they (Irish) do have an interesting body language of confidence. And I certainly don't want to rattle them because they kind of believe they're going to figure it out, and I don't want to mess with that right now.”
No one outside Notre Dame has been overly impressed with the start that has included one other close call against Radford and only one win in double figures when the Irish were heavily favored in all four games.
But Brey and the Irish will take it, knowing it’s a chance to continue to develop without the severe sting of a loss against what’s supposed to be the easy part of the schedule.
The Bisons came in with a 2-1 mark that included a 77-75 point win over Belmont on Monday.
The school in Nashville, Tenn., with an enrollment of 4,600, went from NAIA to Division I in 1999 and played in the NCAAs in 2018. It finished 14-19 a year ago and returned three starters.
The Irish, playing their third game in six days, shot poorly from 3-point range to start – just 5-for-20 for 25% in the first half, though Brey was fine with it because of the open looks.
“We had some great looks,” Brey said. “I know we made 12 (12-for-30, 40% for the game). And it's one of those things where at halftime, ‘Well, we took too many threes.’ Well, they were great shots. And we think we have pretty good shooters. And it's one of those where every time he had (the lead) to 10 or nine, you get a couple of those clean looks. You make one or two, then maybe it’s over.”
It went just the opposite way for the Irish. Goodwin’s 3-pointer at the 4:27 mark of the first half gave the Irish a 29-18 lead, the largest of the game, before a drought struck.
Following a turnover at the 3:40 mark, four different players accounted for six straight 3-point failures. The drought finally ended 1:14 into the second half.
Notre Dame had been so good at getting to the free-throw line through three games (58-68, 85.3%), but didn’t shoot a free throw in the first half and went 4-for-5 overall. The Bisons shot only one, that on Benham’s four-point play.
“I think they’re kind of like us, they do a great job of really not fouling,” Brey said. “And they kind of pack it in (on defense).’’
That kept the Irish drives and chances to draw fouls to a minimum.
But what to make of the Notre Dame defense that was so passive, so full of gaps in the second half.
“First of all, 'I have the utmost respect for them and I knew this was going to be the hardest of these first four games,” Brey said. “We couldn't get away from them. But I'm proud of our group. We kind of believe we can get over the hump, especially in this building. Our crowd was fabulous.”
Brey’s club limited its turnovers to seven, compared to 10 for the Bisons.
“You know, we just didn't want to give up 3s,” Brey said. “We were really riding it and probably a little tired because we had to play so long (on possessions). And as long as it wasn't a 3, I thought we'd have a chance. I think you know you’ve got some exhaustion and we'll come back to the drawing board.
“And we were switching everything. I mean, because we're just worried about shooters, so we're just out on people. So there are going to be some driving areas, but at least we were chasing them off the arc.”
That was true. Lipscomb, averaging 81 points a game coming in, shot only 13 3s, making six.
Acuff couldn’t recall the last time his team had shot only 13 3s. Brey figures if two of those easy buckets underneath were 3s, Lipscomb wins.
He acknowledges it sounds odd, but a lot of days it’s just about escaping.
Laszewski could use a day off. He was on the floor for 40 minutes and spent much of it trying to fend off 6-10 grad student Ahsan Asadullah, who had 45 pounds on him. Leszewski outscored him 16-10 and limited him to three rebounds.
“I think Laszewski was fabulous tonight,” Brey said. “He didn't really score in the first half. But he's guarding everybody, rotating and switching, and the big guy's not coming out. And then he just let the game come to him. And I thought he was really just a man and set a tone for us.”
So the Irish will cut back a little for the next couple days, try to get their legs back, and get ready for Bowling Green on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. EST in the Joyce Center.
It’s pretty certain the Irish won’t get grad student Marcus Hammond back for that game, and probably not for the game against St. Bonaventure in New York as he recovers from a knee strain.
The minutes are piling up for the core five – freshman JJ Starling played 30 minutes and totaled 11 points – but Goodwin said they expected it and are prepared for it.
“You know, you're playing 35, 40 minutes, whatever it is, and I get a little tired, but most of it's mental,” Goodwin said. “We have the right mindset about it. You know you’ve got to get your body right and we're doing that over the course of these next few days.
“It's not just game day, but it's the days leading up to it. I think we've all kind of had that mindset that we needed to be ready for it no matter what.”
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