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Irish Offense Explodes In 100-74 Win Over Jacksonville

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Notre Dame started hot and stayed hot Thursday night cruising to a 100-74 win over Jacksonville at home.

The Irish posted a season-high in points, field goal percentage (59.7 percent) and three-point percentage (56.3 percent), which led to five players reaching double-digits in points.

Blue & Gold Illustrated recaps the Notre Dame victory half-by-half.

FIRST HALF

After shooting 25.8 percent in the first half against Binghamton on Tuesday, the Irish got off to a much better start against Jacksonville.

Guard TJ Gibbs opened the scoring with a three-pointer, which was followed up by a layup from forward John Mooney.

Jacksonville got on the boar with a pair of free throws from guard Jalyn Hinton before Mooney hit a faceup jumper to make it 7-2 Notre Dame with 18:05. Both teams traded their next four baskets each with Gibbs getting another bucket, Mooney connecting on a three-pointer and Juwan Durham making two buckets in his first career start. The Irish led 17-11 with 15:06 left following a free throw from Durham.

Mooney remained red-hot to open knocking down his fourth-straight shot to put the Irish back up 19-13.

After Jacksonville cut it to 21-17 with a nice jumper from forward Jace Hogan, Gibbs made two great passes leading to Irish buckets. The first came as he dribbled up the court and found guard Dane Goodwin in transition for an easy layup. He followed it by grabbing a rebound and finding guard Prentiss Hubb on the wing who turned and flipped back to forward Nate Laszewski for a three-pointer that extended the Irish lead to 26-17 with 12:11 left in the half.

A 10-4 run by the Dolphins cut it to 30-27 Irish following a three-pointer from freshman guard Tyreese Davis. Notre Dame responded however with a 11-4 run fueled by three-pointers from Hubb, Gibbs and Harvey to go up 10 (41-31) at the under-8 media timeout (5:03). Mooney connected on his fifth-straight shot to open the half during the run as well.

The Dolphins again close the gap with a 6-0 run before Notre Dame got hot from deep. Goodwin and Laszewski combined to hit three three-pointers on three-straight possessions to extend Notre Dame’s lead from 43-37 to 52-37 in the matter of 49 seconds. The run of threes gave the Irish their most in a half this season, besting the previous high of eight against Radford.

Goodwin followed with another three-pointer a couple of possessions later to make it 55-39 Irish with under two minutes to play.

Notre Dame went into the break with a 57-43 advantage, which eclipsed the most points scored by the team in half so far this season (56 against DePaul in the second half). Mooney led the way with 13 points while Gibbs had 10 points and season-high six assists. Laszewski and Harvey each added nine points with Goodwin not far behind with eight of his own.

The Irish made 21-of-34 (61.8 percent) from the floor while connecting on 11-of-16 behind the arc (68.8 percent). Jacksonville finished 17-of-36 (47.2 percent) from the field.

SECOND HALF

Notre Dame continued its hot shooting in the second half hitting 7-of-11 to open the half to extend the lead to 20 points.

Gibbs again got the scoring rolling with a two-pointer, which he then followed with a three-pointer to gain some early momentum up 62-45 with 18:42 remaining.

Jacksonville narrowed the lead to 12 following back-to-back buckets from Bell and Hogan, but Notre Dame Dame responded in a big way.

The Irish went on a 10-2 run over the next two-plus minutes to push its lead to 74-54 after Harvey and Laszewski connected on three-pointers and Goodwin hit two buckets of his own.

Goodwin continued the spurt with an and-one conversion getting a layup to fall, while Gibbs drilled another three-pointer to make it 80-56 Irish going into the under-12 media timeout. Notre Dame began the half 9-of-13 from the floor, including 4-of-6 behind the arc. The Irish hit 15 of their first 22 three-point attempts up to that point. Gibbs’ bucket pushed him to 18 points while Goodwin was up to 17 points following his spurt.

Harvey continued what wound up being a 13-0 run with a three-pointer with Goodwin and Mooney hitting two-point field goals of their own to round it out. Heading into the under-8 media timeout (7:42), the Irish had connected on eight of their last 10 attempts to increase the lead to 88-60.

Junior guard Nik Djogo got in the scoring column over the next stretch with a layup in transition and a corner three-pointer. Harvey added a jumper to help keep the Irish up 97-74 with 3:11 remaining.

It was a little bit of a struggle to end the game as the Irish searched for the elusive 100th point, but Djogo was finally able to get a triple to fall with 54 seconds remaining. The score held with Notre Dame taking down the Dolphins 100-74.

Goodwin and Harvey led all Irish scorers with 19 points with Gibbs adding 18 to the efforts. Mooney finished with 16 points and seven rebounds while Laszewski rounded out the double-digit scorers with 12 points. Gibbs and Hubb had game-high seven assists.

Notre Dame finished with a season-high in points, field goal percentage (59.7 percent) and three-point percentage (56.3 percent) for its best performance of the season on that end of the court.

The Irish hit 37-of-62 from the floor and 18-of-32 behind the arc.

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