Observations: Notre Dame men’s basketball holds off High Point, 70-61
Notre Dame’s second home tune-up before the Maui Invitational (in Las Vegas) was a tad more tense than the first.
The Irish (2-0) defeated High Point 70-61 Tuesday in a closer-than-desired win over a team that ended last year ranked 284th at KenPom and lost by 35 at Northwestern four days earlier. A bad shooting night — Notre Dame was 6 of 31 on three-pointers (19.4) — allowed High Point to linger for much of the evening.
Forward Paul Atkinson Jr. was one of three Notre Dame players to post a double-double, finishing with a game-high 19 points and 11 rebounds. Forward Nate Laszewski added 10 points and 16 rebounds, while guard Dane Goodwin had 12 points and 11 boards.
Here are some takeaways from Purcell Pavilion.
Atkinson raises his hand
When Notre Dame needed something, anything on offense early in the second half, it turned to its crafty fifth-year senior forward to find it. Notre Dame ran pick-and-rolls with him on consecutive possessions after falling behind 36-34, and point guard Prentiss Hubb found him in the paint both times. The result was four points, two on a layup and two on free throws.
He was just getting started – on both ends.
Notre Dame ripped off a 13-0 run to take a 47-36 lead, with Atkinson in the middle of it. He started it with those four points. He stayed down on a ball fake to force a tough layup attempt. He scored on a post-up. Shortly after the run ended, he put back his own miss and blocked a layup.
“I take it personally,” Atkinson said. “My teammates trust me a lot when I catch the ball in the post. When shots weren’t falling for us. I took it on my shoulders to attack the rim, get a good shot, and if not, kick it out.”
Atkinson added two blocks and an assist to his double-double. His motor runs only at 100 percent. Even if he had flu symptoms two days prior and the aftereffects lingered past tipoff.
“I thought he was feeling the cobwebs of missing two practices,” head coach Mike Brey said. “I jumped him a little bit at halftime. I told him, ‘You’re fine now. Let’s go.’ He was pretty good.”
Defense adjusts
High Point’s offense runs through junior guard John-Michael Wright, who averaged 20.1 points per game a year ago and took 34.9 percent of his team’s shots when on the floor (seventh highest nationally). The Panthers unsurprisingly turned to him at the start. He had 10 points on 4-of-4 shooting, with Hubb drawing the early assignment.
Needing an answer, Notre Dame turned guard Cormac Ryan on him. Ryan stayed on his hip and chased him around screens all night.
“Cormac was fabulous,” Brey said. “What’s even more fabulous is how he embraces that role.”
Wright ended the game with 17 points and made two of his last nine field goal attempts. With him in check, Notre Dame could keep High Point at arm’s length, even as its three-point tries drew iron.
All told, Notre Dame’s defense was satisfactory. There were some wayward moments where a defender got caught on an off-ball screen that led to an open look and some leaky transition defense, but nothing elongated. High Point’s longest run was 4-0. The Panthers shot 28.1 percent in the second half.
“I thought after the first five minutes, we defended really well,” Brey said.
Notre Dame has to prove it can defend against high-major teams, but it’s worth noting last year’s leaky defense was problematic against anyone. Low-major opponents Detroit and Bellarmine reached 70 points and 1.0 points per possession vs. the Irish in 2020. Neither High Point nor Cal State Northridge topped 0.91 points per possession. Notre Dame feels it’s a preview of what’s next.
“We’re actually going to be a team that can sit down and really bother people,” Ryan said.
A low point shooting night
Notre Dame’s three-point percentage felt impossibly low given the quality of the shots it took.
The Irish made three of their first 23 attempts from deep against High Point. They went everywhere but the rim, despite most of them being rhythm shots. Hubb’s first attempt was an air ball. Ryan cleared the other side of the rim on a three from the wing.
Notre Dame is not going to shoot 19 percent from deep the entire season. It should be safely north of 30, really. But will its shooting be a consistent presence, or will vacillations with low points like this game be a lingering concern? An early season off night evokes the question.
Hubb’s early struggles are as pronounced as anyone else’s. He’s 1-for-13 on threes this year. On one late first-half possession, he clanked two rhythm threes in a row. He had an ocean of space on the second, but it hit the back rim. To cap it off, he missed two straight free throws at the end of the game.
One encouraging sign for Hubb is his 11 assists to three turnovers through two games.
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