SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Notre Dame men’s basketball needed a jolt so badly Saturday in Purcell Pavilion that the team started clapping with each other repetitively in huddles during timeouts in an ill-fated second half comeback attempt.
The Irish rallied from down 14 points with 11:48 remaining in the game to cut the deficit to three points with 1:25 left, but Florida State proved to be too much in a 67-58 win, its fourth consecutive ACC victory.
“Just trying to get riled up,” Irish junior guard J.R. Konieczny said of the clapping. “Just trying to get each other’s backs and just bring some energy to each other.”
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Head coach Micah Shrewsberry was worried about Notre Dame’s energy from the start. Coming off Tuesday’s 75-68 overtime win at Georgia Tech, Shrewsberry didn’t like the way his team handled some success.
“Congrats to Florida State,” Shrewsberry said. “I thought they came in here and really took it to us early. I didn’t think we responded very well early either. That’s a coaching issue.
“I have to get these guys ready to go. I have to get them fired up to play. Spend more time doing the things that we need to do to make us a better team and be able to respond from success. We had success, and I thought we stayed in the success instead of moving to what’s next. That got us early in the game.”
Florida State (10-6, 4-1) never led by more than four points in the first half. But it took a four-point lead into halftime despite shooting 33% from the field and 12.5% from 3. That’s because Notre Dame (7-10, 2-4) allowed Florida State to grab 10 offensive rebounds and force six turnovers in the first half. And the Irish made just one of eight free-throw attempts.
“I need to do my part to get them ready,” Shrewsberry said. “I need to do my part to have them where their juice is right. If they don’t have enough juice, then that’s on me. I need to change how we practice. I need to change what we do in shootaround.”
The Irish won’t have much time to bounce back. Notre Dame plays at Boston College (10-6, 1-4) at 7 p.m. EST on Monday night.
“When you bring energy, you’re more focused,” Konieczny said. “You’re more locked in. We did a poor job of bringing energy in our shootaround today and even in warmups today. We just have to find a way for everybody to bring that juice, to get everybody riled up and ready to go and ready to play every single time we step on the court.”
Before shifting focus to the Eagles, who also lost Saturday, here are five things we learned about Notre Dame against the Seminoles.
1. Tae Davis means a lot to this team
Notre Dame played without starter Tae Davis for the first time this season. During Friday’s practice, Davis went down with a left ankle injury. He attended Saturday’s game with a boot protecting his foot.
Davis, a 6-foot-9 sophomore, averaged 8.3 points and 5.8 rebounds in his first 16 starts of the season. But his injury apparently shook the Irish team.
“You don’t make excuses. You have to play the game no matter what happens. But I thought the moment Tae Davis got hurt in practice, the air just left the entire building,” Shrewsberry said. “We were super energetic leading up to that point. We were guarding our asses off in what we were doing. And he went down and it like sucked the air out of the whole thing and we never got it back.”
Davis does a little bit of everything for Notre Dame, except 3-point shooting (he’s 3-of-26). His length could have been useful on both ends of the floor against Florida State. Davis can create his own shot and takes pressure off ND’s guards with his ballhandling ability.
Perhaps Davis could have helped the Irish handle Florida State’s full-court press that focused on denying freshman guard Markus Burton the ball.
“Tae would have made a huge difference,” said Burton, who led all scorers with 20 points. “Missing Tae was a big key. But the stuff that happened, it doesn’t mean anything. It was all us. Florida State didn’t beat us. We beat ourselves.”
Shrewsberry deemed Davis, who wanted to try to play Saturday, to be day-to-day with his ankle injury.
2. Notre Dame’s needs an on-floor leader
A team thrown together in the months following Shrewsberry being hired as Mike Brey’s replacement in late March was always going to need time to develop this season. The roster has too many players who haven’t played together before and haven’t been relied on as starters in college basketball.
So, it shouldn’t be surprising that Shrewsberry said he doesn’t have a person he can point to as the one to push the right buttons when the team needs to play with more focus, energy or discipline.
“Everybody’s in different roles,” Shrewsberry said. “Everybody’s trying to feel out that different role and what they’re doing. Sometimes that chance for me to step up and be a leader, I’m still making sure I’m trying to do my job the right way.
“It’s hard to lead other people. Sometimes it’s hard to lead other people when you don’t play as much. Sometimes it’s really hard to lead other people when you make mistakes. You’re still trying to figure it out. That’s kind of where we are right now.”
The 5-foot-11 Burton is Notre Dame’s offensive leader with 16.2 points per game. But it’s probably too much to ask of him to become the emotional leader of the team 17 games into his college career. He’s already carrying a lot with as much as he’s asked to do offensively. He’s taken twice as many shots (255 field-goal attempts) as any of his teammates this season. His 68 assists are 54 more than the second highest on the team. He also has 40 more turnovers (67) than anyone on the team.
Burton didn’t have any answers for why the Irish lacked focus Saturday afternoon.
“Who knows,” he said. “It’s just one of those days. You just have to keep grinding, keep fighting. We’ll get back to it, and we’ll be all right.”
How can the Irish tap into that focus moving forward?
“You have to stay locked in,” Burton said. “Some of us probably kind of checked out. That happens. We just have to continue to get better, continue to grow.”
3. Size can give the Irish fits
The difference between Notre Dame and Florida State was clear in pregame layup lines. The Seminoles have so much more height and length than the Irish. In Saturday’s game, Florida State used four players at least 6-foot-10. Notre Dame used two: starting forwards Kebba Njie and Carey Booth (both 6-10). The Seminoles used eight players at least 6-foot-7. The Irish used four: Matt Zona (6-10), Konieczny (6-7), Njie and Booth.
Florida State took advantage of that height with seven blocks and 14 forced turnovers. After giving up 10 offensive rebounds in the first half, Notre Dame recovered to allow just two more in the second half.
That’s not all about height. That’s about a dedication to boxing out and playing tough.
“It gives us a very good understanding of where we need to be at,” Koniezny said. “… A lot of it is just toughness. We know we can compete with other teams. We just played Georgia Tech, who’s one of the best teams in offensive rebounding and getting their shots back. We have the potential to be a team that can compete with anybody.”
4. Free-throw problems haven’t been fixed
Notre Dame didn’t establish a new norm when it made 90.5% (19-21) of its free throws in Tuesday’s win at Georgia Tech. That kind of performance should be considered an aberration until the Irish start to make free throws with more consistency, particularly at home.
Notre Dame set a season-low Saturday by hitting 27.3% (3-11) of its free throws (3-11). The three worst free-throw percentages of the season have come in home losses. The Irish made just 50% (8-16) in last Saturday’s loss to Duke and 53.3% (8-15) in last month’s loss to The Citadel.
Notre Dame missed its first three free throws of the night with Njie missing a pair. Konieczny made his second attempt right after missing his first.
“You feel bad for them,” Shrewsberry said. “I hate that they do it at home, because everybody groans. Like dude missed one free throw to start the game and everybody’s like, ‘Ughhhh.’ How’s he supposed to feel shooting the second one? Just let us get some confidence, a little bit of confidence. Because you once you start doing it, it starts snowballing. And everybody feels that weight.”
Njie and Zona both finished 0-of-3 from the free-throw line. Zona even missed when given a second chance at one following a lane violation by Florida State. Even Konieczny, whose hit 80% of his free throws this season, finished 1-of-3 on Saturday.
“Lack of focus,” Konieczny said. “That’s all it is.”
Florida State made 13 of its 15 free throws (86.7%), including its last four in the final 33 seconds to put the game to bed.
Notre Dame’s free-throw percentage dropped to 71.2 for the season. Opponents are making 73.6% of their free throws against the Irish.
5. Second-half starts remain an elusive issue
Shrewsberry was so bothered by Notre Dame’s start to the second half in last weekend’s loss to Duke that he benched four starters at the same time looking for a spark. And yet Notre Dame started the second half even worse against the Seminoles.
The four-point halftime lead for Florida State grew to 12 in the first 3:04 of the second half, which drew an early timeout from Shrewsberry. Notre Dame came out of the locker room, missed four field goals, three from 3, and committed a pair of fouls and a pair of turnovers.
Shrewsberry’s running out of ideas to try to change those second half slumps.
“We’ve changed our halftime locker room routine,” he said. “We’ve changed when I go talk to the team. We’ve tried playing music at halftime. I don’t know what it is.
“It’s our guys just being able to somebody just grab us and pull us all together before we go back out there and say, ‘Hey, man, come on. This is it. This is our push. This is our chance to start well.’
“We’re just not doing it. Maybe we don’t need to go out there at all. Maybe we just stay out there, warm up, talk on the bench like a YMCA team or something. I don’t have an answer for that right now.
“We’re trying different things. We’re trying to do stuff. Tae being hurt limits who you start, who you play and how you rotate. So that hurt us a little bit with changing personnel. I’m going to start cutting up oranges and giving them to people.”
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