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Notre Dame's Season Of Gut Punches

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It was trying regular season for Mike Grey and senior point guard Matt Farrell.
It was trying regular season for Mike Grey and senior point guard Matt Farrell. (Anthony Gruppuro/USA TODAY Sports)
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Selection Sunday was the coup de grace of a Notre Dame men’s basketball season that was dominated by the phrase “if only.”

• If only the Irish hadn’t lost at home to Ball State on Dec. 5. That was a signal of “Oh, oh, this could be one of those years” moments — much like in 2014 when the Irish lost home games to Indiana State and North Dakota State before Christmas en route to a losing season and having star Jerian Grant declared academically ineligible in the second semester.

Or in 2003-04, when the Irish lost at home at the horn to a 6-24 Central Michigan outfit, which proved to be the difference in leaving a late-surging Irish team out of the NCAA Tournament on Selection Sunday.

• If only the Irish hadn’t blown a 14-point lead and some free throws in an identical 80-77 overtime defeat to Indiana on Dec. 16 when the Hoosiers finished regulation time on an 8-0 run.

• If only Notre Dame could have held on to a 66-60 lead with 5:58 left versus North Carolina at home on Jan. 13 instead of not scoring a field goal thereafter and losing 69-68, when T.J. Gibbs’ drive to the basket had just rolled off the rim at the horn. Had the Irish won, they would have been 4-1 in the ACC.

• If only four days later the Irish could have held on to a 10-point lead and not lost to Louisville in double-overtime, snapping a six-game losing streak at home to the Cardinals dating back to 1994.

• If only the Irish could have held on at home against Miami on Feb. 19 with a 72-67 lead and 7:51 left — before allowing a 13-0 run that led to yet another one-possession loss.

• Oh, yeah … if only senior All-American Bonzie Colson hadn’t missed two months worth of action in January/February because of foot surgery … or senior point guard Matt Farrell not been sidelined nearly a half-dozen games with an ankle problem … if only improving freshman D.J. Harvey not been out of commission basically the final two months (and maybe next season) with a knee injury that required surgery.

• If only Rhode Island — Colson’s home state — could have held on to defeat Davidson in the Atlantic 10 championship game Sunday afternoon. Had that happened, the Fighting Irish, in spite of all the setbacks during the 20-14 regular season (8-10 in the ACC), were in The Big Dance.

It was the season flat-out not meant to be.

“After a season of gut punches, that was another gut punch today,” summarized 18th-year head coach Mike Brey Sunday evening after an Irish practice in preparation for Hampton for Tuesday’s first-round NIT game.

When asked if he was distressed that 20-13 (8-10 in the ACC) Syracuse made it despite losing at home to Notre Dame when Colson was not available, while the Irish did not, Brey bit his lips.

“I don’t want to get into comparing,” he replied. “I know we beat them on their floor. I guess they had a better strength of schedule and that got them in. I don’t have the energy to kind of us/them, up/down … it’s almost kind of a fitting end to how our season went.

“We’ve had all kind of heartbreaking things happen, and on the most important day it was a heartbreaking day … Once I saw Davidson win today. I was very realistic about what could be coming … They lifted [weights] a little bit after the Selection Show and they were in a little bit of a funk to say the least.

“I do know we were very fairly and very thoroughly analyzed. I gotta believe the Selection committee was tired looking at our stuff, because it kept coming back at them in different ways.

Seniors Colson, Farrell and Matt Geben said mainly the right things during a difficult time for the program. One victory in the NCAA Tournament this year would have given them the most career wins ever (8) by a graduating class in The Big Dance for men’s basketball.

“No excuses,” said Farrell, who didn’t even watch the Selection Show. “The committee made their decisions, we didn’t do enough to get in — sometimes life sucks.

“It wasn’t our goal, but we have a championship ahead of us that we can win. We can play together and keep putting the uniform on. That’s something we’re going to strive to do. It’s about our group, the culture here. We really enjoy being around each other.”

For Geben, the NIT does provide a final opportunity to end the season without a bitter taste.

“I get to play more basketball with my friends and teammates at Notre Dame, play more in the Notre Dame jersey and have a better finish than the one we had in Brooklyn,” Geben said. “It’s pretty established that nobody in the locker room wants to play in the NIT. We don’t set our goals to play in the NIT, but with that being said, a lot of things happened during the season that we couldn’t control. That’s our reality so we’re trying to make the most out of it, just like we were trying to make the most out of it throughout the whole season.

“We have to find a way to completely disassociate from the NCAA Tournament. There’s going to be a lot of media about it, we’re going to see it all over social media and TV, but we just have to stay away from it and worry about what we have to do — win five games.”

The huge selling point for Brey was how Notre Dame can bookend a frustrating campaign with capturing the prestigious Maui Invitational in November, and then capping it with an NIT championship in Madison Square Garden.

“To have an NIT banner hanging up when they come back for reunions, to think about the year they went through would be kind of a neat thing,” Brey said. “I think they’ll be very ready to attack it.”

“For us seniors and for us to play with the unit we had when we were in Maui is good,” Colson said. “That’s one of the big reasons we still want to play. It’s another opportunity for us to put our jerseys on and play for the University of Notre Dame. Go out there and cut the nets in MSG.”

Because Brey has talked “realistically” with the team for more than a month about this possibility, he believes it was better able to absorb another punch. However, he contended that from here on out, it’s up to them to continue to buy in mentally.

“I think they’ve worked themselves back to ‘Alright, here is the NIT reality that Coach told us about,’ ” Brey said. “This group has had ownership of itself for a long time … they’re going to make the decisions on preparation. There’s no motivational speech from Coach right now. It’s our senior class saying right now, ‘Let’s keep doing this thing or not.’”


Brey’s Tale of Two Teams

This will be Notre Dame’s 12th trip to the NIT, and the fifth under Brey, since doing it the first time in 1968 under head coach John Dee. Fifty years the Irish were the third-place finisher, highlighted by defeating rising young coach Robert Montgomery Knight’s Army team in the first round (62-58).

The Irish have finished as the runner-up four times — 1973 and 1984 under Digger Phelps, 1992 with John MacLeod, and 2000 with Matt Doherty. Only Dayton with five has more runner-up placements, which is why the opportunity to hang an NIT banner is still valued to Brey.

Begun in 1938, the NIT remained a highly prestigious tournament through much of the 1970s because the NCAA Tournament took only 25 to 32 teams back then (or only conference champions), while the NIT took 16, with all the games in Madison Square Garden.

In fact, next to the 1978 Final Four and the 2015 ACC Championship, the 1973 NIT remains the third-most impressive tournament run for the Irish in men’s basketball annals. In the 16-team field that year the Irish upset Pac-8 runner up USC and then blue bloods Louisville and North Carolina — both of which were in the Final Four the previous year — before losing at the horn in overtime to Virginia Tech in the championship game.

The NIT is much like a minor football bowl in December: It all comes down to who wants to be there and values the experience. Brey told his squad the story of two of his NIT teams.

The 2004-05 Irish with senior guard Chris Thomas declared in the preseason they were primed to achieve 30 victories for the first time in school history. They didn’t even end up playing 30 games, finishing 17-12. When the Irish did not get a bid to the NCAA Tournament, they were in the tank and were ousted in the first round of the NIT at home by Patriot League member Holy Cross.

“We really weren’t interested and it was a really tough end to a season,” Brey recalled. “I know when they came back for reunions they said they wished they would have handled that better.”

Conversely, in 2008-09 when current Notre Dame assistant coach Ryan Ayers was a senior, the Irish lost seven straight conference games in the Big East, much like this year in the ACC, but defeated UAB, New Mexico and Kentucky, all at home, in the NIT to advance to the semifinals in Madison Square Garden, where they lost 67-59 to Penn State.

That group also had three other seniors in Luke Zeller, Kyle McAlarney and Zach Hillesland. With four seniors likewise on this team, including graduate student Austin Torres, Brey said this is not about a “springboard” to next season, which welcomes six new players (five freshmen and current 6-11 Connecticut transfer Juwan Durham).

“These seniors have to play it out,” Brey said. “It’s their team. They’re the guys. You don’t do anything different there.”

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