No. 7 Duke Hands Irish A Cruel 94-60 Loss At Cameron Indoor
If Notre Dame had any chance of beating — or even hanging with — No. 7 Duke Saturday afternoon, it had to do all the things it typically does very well, only better.
Three-point shooting, possession security and scoring the ball held the top three spots on the to-do list.
The Irish were miserable in all three categories, and they paid a hefty price in a 94-60 beatdown at Cameron Indoor Stadium, the biggest loss ever in this series for Irish head coach Mike Brey.
*The Irish entered the game averaging fewer than 10 turnovers. It had nine giveaways in the first half on its way to 14 for the game, one off of its season high. Duke recorded 11 steals.
*Notre Dame was tied for the ACC lead with 9.8 made three-pointers per game. It made five on 21 attempts, including just one of its 10 tries in the first half.
*The Irish also fell 15 points short of their 75.1 season scoring average.
“That counted as one league loss?” Brey rhetorically asked immediately after the blowout. “Okay, okay, I can live with that. They are fabulous.”
Duke’s defensive strategy was obvious from the jump, take away Notre Dame’s three-point shooters and force the Irish to try and win this game around the basket.
Start to finish, the plan worked perfectively.
“We have to make 10 threes to win league games, I don’t even know if we got 10 clean looks,” Brey said of Duke’s hawking defense. “Even the looks we got were rushed.”
Good work from senior Irish forwards Juwan Durham and John Mooney provided more than enough interior scoring — Notre Dame (15-10; 6-8 ACC) scored 36 interior points on respectable 18-of-42 shooting from inside the arc (43 percent).
But with no support from the Irish perimeter players, Duke methodically built a 42-32 halftime lead then opened the second half on a 32-12 run that gave the Blue Devils a 74-44 lead and made this one a snoozer.
Duke (22-3; 12-2 ACC) made it look easy — shooting 39-of-69 (57 percent) and 10-of-22 three-pointers (46 percent) — and has now won six straight in this series, including the last four by an average of 24 points.
Mooney and Durham were the only Irish players to score double figures — Mooney finishing with 19 points and nine rebounds, narrowly missing his 21st double-double.
Player of the Game: Durham continues to make his case for more minutes with the best game of his career. Even while battling some marginal foul trouble, Durham scored 13 of his career-high 21 points in the first half. He added four rebounds and some needed early game energy, as he has all season.
Turning Point: Notre Dame went on a 7-0 scoring run in the first half — its biggest run of the game — to pull to 20-19 with 8:34 remaining before the break. Duke responded with a 9-0 run and never looked back or quit scoring after that.
No Support
Take away the work of Mooney and Durham and there was little left to talk about for Notre Dame.
The Irish starting backcourt of sophomore Prentiss Hubb and seniors T.J. Gibbs and Rex Pflueger combined for six points — all coming from Hubb — on 2-of-20 shooting.
Since scoring a season-high 18 points three games ago in a 61-57 win at Clemson, Pflueger has been held scoreless in the previous two games. Gibbs was also held scoreless against Duke on 0-of-7 shooting after managing just six points on 2-of-11 shooting his last time out against Virginia.
These two Irish senior captains combined for 0-of-13 shooting against the Blue Devils.
“I think their ball pressure really bothered us,” Brey said in the understatement of the season. “We couldn’t get anything going from our guards.”
State of the Union
To truly elevate its NCAA Tournament hopes from long shot to realistic, Notre Dame needed to snag two wins during this recent three-game road swing against Clemson, Virginia and Duke.
It won the first against Clemson, but lost the final two, the most disappointing in a 50-49 overtime defeat earlier this week at Virginia.
The Duke loss drops Notre Dame to 6-8 in ACC play — and into the bottom half of the standings — and puts the Irish in danger of wiping out all of the equity it built during a recent four-game winning streak.
Playing in a league that is not expected to receive more than four NCAA Tournament bids, floating in a logjam around ninth or 10th in the conference standings does Notre Dame no good with only three weeks and six games left in the regular season.
Up Next: The Irish get a shot at some payback, and a must-win, when they return to Purcell Pavilion Monday on short rest to play North Carolina (10-15; 3-11) for the second time this season.
The Tar Heels handed Notre Dame a rough start to the ACC season with a 76-65 loss at Chapel Hill, N.C., in the regular-season and league opener for both teams.
North Carolina’s super freshman, Cole Anthony, was unstoppable in the game, going for 34 points, which included 6-of-11 three-point shooting.
The Irish have lost seven straight in this series since March of 2016 after Notre Dame had won three straight between January of 2015 and February 2016.
North Carolina stole a 69-68 win in January of 2018, the last time these two played at Purcell Pavilion.
The biggest win for Notre Dame in this series came in March of 2015 when the Irish bumped off the Tar Heals, 90-82, in Greensboro, N.C., to claim the ACC Conference Tournament championship.
An injury to Anthony in late November sent UNC’s season into a tailspin. Anthony made it back after a few weeks on the sideline, but his team didn’t come with him.
The Tar Heals have lost 10 of their last 12 games, including five straight, after their 64-62 home loss Saturday to Virginia.
A series that dates back 62 years and 32 games, North Carolina leads 25-7 all-time.
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