SOUTH BEND, Ind. — Micah Shrewsberry didn’t let the reporter finish his question before the Notre Dame men’s basketball head coach made his point of view clear.
“Absolutely not,” Shrewsberry said when asked if there was a moral victory to be gained from a 67-59 loss to No. 14 Duke (11-3, 2-1 ACC) on Saturday night in Purcell Pavilion. “None. Zero.”
What about a consolation for the effort shown against a top-15 team?
“No. Zero. No. I want to win the game,” Shrewsberry said. “I don’t care. Being close don’t help you in nothing. You get a point in cornhole, but it ain’t getting no points in the ACC standings. It ain’t helping us.”
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The Irish (6-9, 1-3) had some things to be proud of in their performance against the preseason favorite to win the Atlantic Coast Conference, but Notre Dame wants victories to be real rather than moral.
Here’s what we learned about Notre Dame on Saturday in the finale of a six-game homestand. The Irish will head to Georgia Tech (8-6, 1-2) for a conference road game Tuesday at 9 p.m. EST (ACC Network).
1. Notre Dame needs to start second halves better
Notre Dame shouldn’t have needed motivation to start the second half better against Duke. The Irish watched a nine-point lead flip to a two-point deficit in the final seven minutes of the first half to trail Duke 29-27.
The Irish started the second half with its same starting five — guards Markus Burton and J.R. Konieczny and forwards Tae Davis, Carey Booth and Kebba Njie — but stayed in a funk. Duke opened with a 5-0 run before Shrewberry took a timeout just 2:40 into the second half. During that stretch, the Irish missed all five of their shots, gave away two turnovers and committed two fouls.
“We didn’t come out great,” Njie said. “That really gave them a spark. That’s where the game really opened up from there. That put us in a hole. Other than that, we were fighting with them the whole time. We have to start the second halves better.”
Shrewsberry responded by emptying his four-man bench of Julian Roper II, Logan Imes, Braeden Shrewsberry and Matt Zona and sitting every starter except for Burton. Something needed to change.
“Duke’s known for making runs,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “They did it against Syracuse the other night. So, it’s not like we came in unprepared. Like, ‘Oh, man! Duke goes on runs to start the second half?’ We talked about it.
“I said it the other night. If we keep starting like this, I need to do something different. That’s on me. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me three times, that’s on me now. I should have changed something then.
“It won’t happen again, I’ll tell you that much. We’re going to start the second halves better, because that put us behind. That set the tone for them of how the second half was played.”
2. Notre Dame can’t afford to miss free throws
The Irish struggle to score. That’s not a new development.
Notre Dame entered Saturday with the ninth-worst scoring offense in Division I men’s basketball for averaging 62.8 points per game. The only teams below the Irish play in either the Patriot League, Ivy League, MAAC, Horizon League, MEAC or SWAC.
That makes every trip to the free-throw line that much more important for Notre Dame. The Irish had a chance to cash in 16 free throws against Duke. They only made eight of them. Five of those misses came in the second half.
“You get in a game like this, we have to make our free throws,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “It’s not like we’re trying to miss free throws. And it’s not like they’re not putting effort into being good at it.
“We shoot free throws throughout practice. Then just the other day we finished with 50. If they would come in and be missing free throws and like I’d never seen these dudes in the gym working on free throws, then I’d have something to say about it.”
Davis was Notre Dame’s worst culprit at the charity stripe. He finished just 3-of-8 with back-to-back misses when Notre Dame trailed by only four points with 1:58 remaining in the game. Notre Dame missed five free throws in the second half as a team.
3. The Irish defense is legit
Just ask Duke center Kyle Filipowski. Notre Dame made a concerted effort to limit Duke’s ability to score in the paint, which involved a lot of focus on the 7-foot center leading the Blue Devils with 17.5 points per game.
Filipowski, who finished the game with seven points on 2-of-12 shooting from the field, didn’t make his first field goal until 9:59 remained in regulation. And that happened to be a 3-pointer.
Or ask Duke head coach Jon Scheyer. His team entered the game shooting 49.7% from the field and scoring 83.5 points per game this season. It made just 35.6% of its shots and scored just 67 points in Purcell Pavilion.
“I really credit what they did on defense,” Scheyer said. “They made life hard for us. They’re physical. They’re tough.”
Notre Dame ended up outscoring Duke in the paint by a 28-22 margin.
“We wanted to protect the paint,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “We did a really good job of that. Part of that was doubling the post some. But that allows Mark Mitchell to get loose.
“He made the two 3s. But that’s on me. I tell our guys that. You have to choose to try and take something away. When he makes 3s, I’ll raise my hand. Because that’s on me. I told you guys to stay there.”
Mitchell, a 6-9 forward, scored a career-high 23 points. He came into the night shooting 1-of-22 beyond the 3-point line. He made both of his attempts Saturday.
“Their defense is legit,” Scheyer said. “That’s how you build a culture is playing defense.”
4. Markus Burton still needs help
Notre Dame freshman guard Markus Burton led the Irish with 18 points, but he needed 21 shots to get there. The 5-11 Burton struggled to get his shot to fall consistently with just seven makes.
Burton tried to play the role of distributor, but Duke made an emphasis on taking away passes to the perimeter on drives. Notre Dame finished with just five assists on the night. Burton had four of them.
“He’s getting by them, getting into the paint, causing rotations, they just quit switching,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “And then they just stay at home. So who’s he going to pass it to? Everybody’s denied on the perimeter.
“It’s hard to get assists. Sometimes it’s us. Sometimes it’s them. If he doesn’t have anybody to pass it to, he’s not going to get an assist. We want to move it. We want to do stuff. But sometimes people guard us in certain ways that we just can’t. We try the best to move it, get slips and get cuts. That’s where our execution has to get better.”
The Irish don’t have enough players who can create their own shots. Davis did a good job of penetrating into the paint, but he bailed Duke out by not making his free throws. Two of Notre Dame’s starters, Konieczny (two points) and Booth (three points), made just one field goal apiece.
“We’re limited in who we are as a team offensively currently as constructed,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “We’re limited. We’ll grow. We’ll keep getting better. But that’s the thing. I don’t know how much that changes this year.
“We get a little bit better in our in execution. We have to be a little better in our execution of what we’re doing and having everybody on the same page. So, our focus has to be better offensively. From night to night, guys have off nights sometimes. But my effort can’t be off. My focus can’t be off. My discipline can’t be off. My shot might be off, but the other stuff can’t be.”
5. The Irish bench can provide a spark
When Micah Shrewsberry made his four-man substation early in the second half, the bench players did bring life to Notre Dame’s offense and to the home supporters in a crowd of 8,066.
Braeden Shrewsberry, his son, made a pair of 3-pointers on his first shots of the half. And Roper made a pair of layups in the lane.
But that lineup, which included 6-9 Zona and no other players taller than 6-4, struggled to defend Mitchell. He scored seven points against that defense and the first 14 points of the half for Duke.
“That group came in and reset the tone of how hard we needed to play,” Micah Shrewsberry said, “so I was proud of that group.”
Braeden Shrewsberry finished with 12 points off the bench in nearly 27 minutes. But he committed a costly turnover with a pass to Duke’s Jeremy Roach with Notre Dame trailing by four points with 35 seconds left in the game. Roach allowed the Blue Devils to ice the game away from there by making his next six free throws.
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