Notre Dame blows its last chance to show up in non-conference play in spectacular fashion
Notre Dame’s last chance at a decent non-conference win went by the wayside tonight as the Fighting Irish put forth easily their worst effort of the season. If hanging with three ranked teams down to the wire represents the ceiling of this Notre Dame team without Markus Burton, tonight we saw the floor.
Stops were easy to come by in the early going for the Notre Dame defense, as they held the cold-shooting Bulldogs to plenty of one-and-done’s. Georgia missed their first 9 shots from the floor, eight of them threes, before Somto Cyril finally got a look near the rim to break the ice. Notre Dame, however, wasn’t blowing the doors off offensively either, and a scoring drought after a few early buckets in the paint led to a 18-3 run for Georgia.
Georgia got a big lift off of their bench from fifth-year senior Dakota Leffew, who halted the Bulldogs’ shooting woes singlehandedly. He made all of his first three looks from deep while the rest of the team was 0-for-9. The heat check was on when he drilled a deep one with Julian Roper close enough to contest the shot.
Also contributing to the pain were careless turnovers, particularly a bad pick-six thrown by Garrett Sundra and two by an overmatched Logan Imes, so plenty of the early negative momentum was triggered by the back half of the Irish rotation. The bleeding finally stopped when J.R. Konieczny wrestled away a tough offensive rebound from a Georgia defender and got the ball to Tae Davis for a post bucket. An eerily similar tough board on the defensive end from Konieczny led to an and-1 for Davis on the next possession to pull the score to 18-15 at the under-8 timeout.
However, the defense began to bleed a little more when the game resumed, and the Irish had no answers offensively besides the occasional positive play on a Davis drive. Defensive rebounding began to falter, and Georgia was able to grind the lead back up to 11 over the course of the next five minutes. The ineptitude hit a low when Roper caught the ball in great position under the hoop and couldn’t even manage a shot attempt. He then got away with a travel, kicked the ball out, got the ball back, and then lost the handle when attempting to do a spin move on a frustration drive. Morale was not good, and the Irish went to the locker room down 34-22.
The second half began with more of the same frustrating defense, as the Bulldogs got a blow-by layup, an open corner three, and a mid-range jumper with no one within a mile to get a hand up to start the half. However, a Braeden Shrewsberry corner three off of a well-designed baseline out-of-bounds play by Dad, followed by a Davis steal and a Matt Allocco transition three got the Irish back within nine.
Nikita Konstantinovskyi had a pretty rough first half, but rebounded (literally) in the second half for a nice stretch to keep the Irish run going. He made a crafty move under the basket off of an Allocco pass and on the ensuing possession, grabbed two offensive rebounds before getting an and-1 on a strong drive to the hoop. A strong defensive possession (featuring a nice box-out by Sundra) led to a fast-break lay-up for Allocco to get the deficit down to four.
However. Leffew continued to be a pain by drilling a corner three, and Sundra got called for a tough foul on what looked like a clean block to swing some momentum back Georgia’s way. Davis hit a jumper to get the Irish back within six, and then the game turned into a bit of a rock fight. Notre Dame began to defend the screen-and-roll much more effectively, but lost their shooting touch and missed some decent looks. Nobody scored for either team for over two minutes.
The drought proved costly when Georgia decided to re-open the scoring without a friendly warning. RJ Godfrey made a baby-hook and no Irish player found Silas Demary in transition, who knocked down a triple to get the lead back to double-digits. Micah Shrewsberry called timeout with just over 8 minutes remaining to try to stop the bleeding.
Unfortunately, Shrewsberry brought a Band-Aid for a team that needed a tourniquet. Despite the insistence of ESPNU’s broadcast crew, the Irish did not have another run in them. Notre Dame went to a small lineup and began to leak more offensive rebounds (most notably to five-star freshman Asa Newell) while showing no semblance of an offensive identity. Davis and Shrewsberry continued to try to do too much while the other three guys mostly stood and watched. Burton’s absence may have been more painful for the previous three games, but it was most obvious for this one.
Bullet Points:
- There were some rotation changes for the Irish. After pulling Imes from the rotation in the second half of the Creighton game, Micah Shrewsberry put Julian Roper in the starting lineup in his place. Following his hot game, Sundra was the first man in off the bench. He picked up right where he left off and immediately hit a corner three. He then started the second half in place of Roper.
- Konieczny didn’t play at all in the second half after showing good energy in the first. With the Irish needing points, it did not help at all having Roper out there in his stead, because no one needs to guard Roper, and Georgia’s help defense was liberal.
- Davis and Shrewsberry scored 14 (inefficient) points apiece. No one else scored more than 5 for the Irish.
- Sundra has only missed one of his eight shots this season.