Irish MBB team follows familiar script in unraveling against Georgia
Mike Brey and his Notre Dame men’s basketball team went down to Georgia looking for a little redemption.
They got a bit of a rerun instead.
In the Hoopsgiving Event at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, Georgia followed previous opponent Marquette’s formula for Irish frustration — getting physical, pounding the paint and forcing a season-high 15 turnovers with relentless ball pressure in a 77-62 bullying of ND on Sunday.
The Irish (7-4) have been outscored in the lane by a combined 90-44 during its first two-game losing streak of the season, each loss coming by a 15-point margin. This time it was Georgia’s Braelen Bridges and Matthew-Alexander Moncrieffe exposing Notre Dame’s interior defense to the tune of 33 combined points on a collective 15-of-15 shooting from the field from the Bulldog bigs.
“I was worried that this could happen and we could get beat up by their physicality,” Irish coach Mike Brey said. “It's given us a problem continually this season, and it's the old, ‘If you help too much, they make 3s.’
“But my gosh, at some point, someone other than Nate Laszewski has to put his chest on people. And I don't know, our guys may have to lose more before it really stings them.”
This from a Georgia team (8-3) that went 6-26 last season and 1-17 in SEC play. First-year Bulldogs coach Mike White has a transfer-heavy roster (10), most of whom played in the game. Eleven Georgia players had logged minutes by halftime.
White is the 45-year-old son of former Notre Dame athletic director Kevin White, the latter of whom was one of a modest crowd of 3,087 — 16 percent of the facility’s capacity.
“I’ve got the utmost respect for Mike,” Brey said. “I think he's the next generation of coaches for us and can be a leader for coaches, and he is a great role model. He does it the right way. He's a positive guy. I want my son to play for him.
“And certainly his father took care of me and hired me 22 years ago at Notre Dame. So special spot in my heart for the White family, but the man can really coach, and I think it was a great hire by Georgia.”
Beyond his defense Laszewski, had a brilliant game all the way around. He scored a game-high 20 points and had four of Notre Dame’s 11 3-pointers.
In fact, the Irish started strong and led much of the first half by knocking down 3s against the nation’s seventh-best team at defending them (26%) coming in. The Irish finished 11-of-23 from the arc (47.8 percent).
But Notre Dame unraveled late in the first half because of their sloppiness with the ball on offense and lack of resistance inside on defense. Georgia closed on a 15-6 for a 41-36 lead at the break.
Georgia never trailed in the second half and had pushed its advantage to double digits, 58-48, with 9:47 left. The Irish answered with an 8-0 run, capped by a Laszewski 3, to cut the lead to 58-55 at the 7:43 mark.
But Justin Hill’s 3-pointer touched off an 11-0 surge by the Bulldogs for a 69-55 command. Bridges scored six points in that stretch and the Irish got no closer than 12 the rest of the way.
The 6-foot-11 Bridges led Georgia with 18 points, roughly triple his scoring average coming in. Cormac Ryan and JJ Starling joined Laszewski in double figures for the Irish with 15 and 14 points, respectively.
“We really started the game pretty well,” Brey said. “We just can't maintain it defensively. And you know, you get it to three, and you're kind of celebrating a little bit, and then you don't put your chest on a guy or take a charge.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Nate Laszewski. He got run over 17 times, and he just keeps taking charges, but nobody else put their chest in there. ’Til we learn that, we'll probably keep losing.”
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