Notre Dame Basketball Loses One-Point OT 'Rock Fight' At Virginia
A common — and not unfounded — belief in college basketball is that the first team to score 60 points wins the game.
But with Notre Dame playing Tuesday at Virginia — the best defensive team in the nation — the first one to 50 points was a better projection.
The Cavaliers got there, Notre Dame did not, as the Irish were dealt a grinding 50-49 loss, in overtime.
“We’re disappointed we lost,” Irish head coach Mike Brey said in an interview to Fighting Irish Media, after suffering his third one-point defeat of this ACC season. “It was going to be a rock fight, it was going to be in the 50s, we had our chances.”
In a game that more than lived up to its low-score billing, neither team even approached 40-percent shooting.
But missed opportunities and trademark Virginia defense limited Notre Dame to just one field goal and three points over the last 2:37 of regulation and the five minutes of overtime.
The Irish dropped to 0-6 all-time in Charlottesville and Coach Brey fell to 1-10 against Virginia head coach Tony Bennett, arguably Brey’s biggest coaching nemesis in the country.
Execution didn’t match opportunities for the Irish, which scored on only two of its final 12 possessions in the game and managed only five points in the final 9:38, including overtime.
“Im disappointed for our group because we played our hearts out,” Brey said. “I thought their defense kinda bothered us in the last seven minutes.”
Long-range shooting might best illustrate the outcome of this game.
The Irish went 5-of-12 from behind the arc in the first half to take a 26-22 lead at the break. It went 1-for-11 from long range in the second half and 0-for-3 in overtime.
In a game that featured seven ties and seven lead changes, neither team ever led by more than five points but Virginia managed a 10-0 run midway through the second half that turned a 38-33 Irish lead into a 43-38 Cavalier advantage, a stretch that turned momentum and kept Notre Dame from pulling away.
Irish sophomore guard Prentiss Hubb paced the Irish with 12 points, but on only 5-of-12 shooting.
Sophomore forward Nate Laszewski added 11 points, but again, he shot only 1-of-6 three-pointers and missed some critical looks.
Senior forward John Mooney quietly recorded his 20th double-double of the season with 11 points and 14 rebounds, but he badly whiffed on two critical foul shots in overtime, he shot 4-of-14 from the field, and he missed all five of his three-pointers.
Player of the Game: Not much to choose from, but senior forward Juwan Durham was active early and finished with six points on 3-of-4 shooting with three rebounds in 18 minutes. He was seldom used in the second half in favor of a heavy dose of Laszewski.
Turning Point: Leading 47-45 with 2:37 remaining in regulation, Notre Dame showed little poise offensively and failed to score on its final four possessions before overtime, affording Virginia the necessary momentum to snap the Irish four-game ACC winning streak.
A Statistical Nightmare
Big offensive numbers weren’t expected Tuesday, but Durham (3-of-4) was the only Irish player to shoot 50 percent. And beyond Mooney with his 14 rebounds, no other Irish had more than four boards on the night, The Irish also recorded only 11 assists, six below its season average.
Usually reliable senior guard T.J. Gibbs, who had scored double figures in each of previous 12 ACC games this season, finished with six points on 2-of-11 shooting.
State of the Union
A win over Virginia would have lifted the Irish to 7-6 in ACC play and into a tie with NC State for fourth place.
In a league that ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi believes only gets four NCAA Tournament bids, Notre Dame (15-9; 6-7 ACC) now stands alone in seventh place.
Find a way to win at Duke Saturday, and Notre Dame at 7-7 in conference can put itself very much back in the hunt for a strong finish and some NCAA Tournament consideration.
Lose it, and fall back to two games under .500, and the uphill slope is greased once again after recovering from the 1-4 and 2-6 start.
Up Next: The fact that Brey is 5-7 all-time against Duke and its head coach Mike Krzyzewski seems stunning on the surface, given the sustained success the hall of fame Blue Devils skipper has enjoyed in his 30 years coaching in Durham, N.C.
What’s even more remarkable is how Brey owned this series against his mentor from when Notre Dame joined the ACC for the 2013-14 season through the end of 2015-16.
During that span, Brey guided Notre Dame to five wins in six games versus Duke, including a victory in January of 2016 at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and two consecutive ACC Tournament wins in 2015 and 2016 — the first of those in a semi-finals match-up that catapulted the Irish to a conference tournament title.
At one point, Brey was 5-2 against Krzyzewski, a coach Brey worked under for eight years as an assistant at Duke (1987-95).
Things have since flipped.
Since January of 2017, Duke has won five straight in the series, the previous three victories coming by an average of 21 points per outing.
Notre Dame is 1-8 all-time at Cameron. Brey has one win in three tries there.
Duke is 25-7 all-time in a series dates back to 1965.
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