For points of Tuesday's game inside Capital One Arena, No. 12 seed Notre Dame men's basketball's young crop of talent looked like they'd been here before.
The bright lights of the ACC Tournament weren't enough to affect freshman point guard Markus Burton, who had 15 points by halftime and seemingly got to any spot on the floor as he wished.
Sophomore forward Tae Davis, who played two tournament games last year at Seton Hall — one in Madison Square Garden as part of the Big East Tournament and one at Colorado as part of the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) — didn't look shy when scoring five points within the first three minutes of the game.
Freshman guard Braeden Shrewsberry, head coach Micah Shrewsberry's son, a 41% shooter from the 3-point line, came right out of the halftime break and drained a 3-pointer that got Notre Dame's bench up and off its feet in celebration.
Burton, Davis and Shrewsberry have emerged as ND's top three scoring options, and their competitive identities were tested in Notre Dame's 84-80 win over No. 13 seed Georgia Tech in the opening game of the conference tournament. The Yellow Jackets fought back from 17 down and made it a back-and-forth game for the final minutes, but Davis' two-way ability, Shrewsberry's shooting consistency and Burton's playmaking put the Irish (13-19) over the hump.
"First, I want to congratulate Georgia Tech," Micah Shrewsberry said after the game. "As I saw them in the bracket, it was a team I just didn't want to play them again. I got so much respect for Damon [Stoudamire] as a coach, his whole staff. They've played really, really well throughout this year, and he can coach, man."
"I knew it would be a really tough battle. But proud of our guys, proud of their effort. When we had to dig in and come back, we made some big-time plays."
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Arguably no play was bigger than Notre Dame's second-to-final defensive possession, when Davis switched onto Georgia Tech guard Nathan George, who scored a game-high 24 points. With ND holding a two-point lead and Burton, George's normal matchup, having four fouls, Davis got into a defensive stance and accepted the challenge. While George drove down the lane, Davis used his 6-foot-9 frame and got a deflection that resulted in a steal for Irish forward Kebba Njie.
The Yellow Jackets were forced to foul Braeden Shrewsberry, who effectively put the game out of reach by knocking in both free throws on the other end. George scored 13 points in the second half, but Davis said he had confidence in getting a stop because of Notre Dame's preparation in pick-and-roll defense.
"The coaches just made adjustments really throughout the game," Davis said. "I ended up on him. We was kind of working on that in practice, and it just translated late in the game."
Davis finished with 12 points on 4-of-9 shooting with three assists and three rebounds. Midway through the second half, Davis was thrust into the point guard role when Stoudamire and the Yellow Jackets switched to a full-court press.
The extra pressure gave ND trouble, forcing the Irish to commit 10 second-half turnovers. Behind George and Baye Ndongo, the latter of which scored 22 points, Georgia Tech climbed back into the game and took its first lead with under five minutes left while face-guarding the ACC Rookie of the Year to deny Burton the ball.
"They were being really aggressive with their double-teams," Micah Shrewsberry said. "They were trapping some ball screens. They were running ... they're a good offensive rebounding team, and we were boxing out and maybe came up with it, but then we were getting a little casual with our rebounds, and they were stealing it from behind."
"Human nature sometimes sets in. A team that is down really gets aggressive, and the team that's up sometimes takes their foot off the gas and starts to coast, and you see leads like that change. That's what happened. So then everything starts going your way, like threes start falling. We were fouling and sending them to the free-throw line a little too much. They were getting offensive rebounds and some turnovers, and everything kind of snowballed, but we were able to kind of stymy it at the end."
Davis and Burton each committed four turnovers, but Notre Dame's scoring proved too much for the Yellow Jackets late. Burton scored six of his 21 points in the second half and dished out a team-high eight assists. Braeden Shrewsberry caught fire from beyond the arc and made four 3-pointers en route to a team-high 23 points. Njie also finished in double figures with 11 points. The Penn State transfer hauled in nine rebounds, including six in the second half.
Earlier in the season, several opponents, including Auburn, Marquette and NC State, showed full-court pressure against Notre Dame and forced 13, 19 and 12 turnovers in those games, respectively. Notre Dame never really found an exact recipe for breaking Georgia Tech's press, but its defense was the difference, according to Micah Shrewsberry.
"I don't think anything has come easy for us this whole season," he said. "We've learned how to rally through it. I think we were scoring the ball pretty well, obviously when we weren't turning it over there late, but we were scoring it pretty well. And I just felt like at the end of the day ... they were scoring, as well, but I felt like at the end of the day, when it's time to get a stop, this is the group that can do it. That's what we did that last possession."
Forward Matt Zona contributed seven points off the bench, while forward Carey Booth finished with five points, including a 3-pointer and thunderous slam dunk tha occurred on back-to-back offensive possessions in the second half. Guards Julian Roper II (three) and J.R. Konieczny (two) rounded out Notre Dame's scoring.
Braeden said his teammates did a good job of finding him off screens and in transition, and he'll end his freshman campaign against Georgia Tech by averaging 16.6 points per game in the three-game series, which Notre Dame swept. Stoudamire, who has a previous relationship with Micah from their ties to the Boston Celtics franchise (never coached together), said the Yellow Jackets were too passive in their defensive principles.
"Even a couple times on Burton, we were supposed to be trapping the ball, screening, our bigs are back," Stoudamire said. "Shrewsberry, the same thing. You have to really get into a guy like him because he's a rhythm player, and he found his rhythm and got open. A couple of the other guys hit threes, but we can live with that."
"I have a motto: Threes beat you, twos don't. I think those early threes, it wasn't so much that for me, it's that you give guys confidence and you give them a rhythm. We broke it in the second half, but by then ... we had a couple plays, like I said, and we didn't make them."
Notre Dame is scheduled to play No. 5 Wake Forest (19-12) in the second round on Wednesday. Tip off is 2:30 p.m. EST on ESPN. The Irish defeated Wake Forest 70-65 on Feb. 27, where Burton poured in a career-high 31 points in front of the home crowd at Purcell Pavillon.
The Demon Deacons have lost two of their three games since, including a one-point loss at the hands of Georgia Tech last Tuesday in Winston-Salem, N.C..
"They're a talented team," Shrewsberry said. "They're an explosive team. When you have three guards that can all score it, but you have two good big guys, they kind of put you in a bind a little bit. We've got to get back and start preparing and figure out what we need to do to have success against them.
"Playing a good team, I guess, is what frightens you, a talented team. But what excites me is we get a chance to play again tomorrow. That's really exciting. I would hate to be on the bus right now going home."
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