Notre Dame 86, Buffalo 77: Irish wake up after halftime

An extremely shaky effort

First off, hello. I’m Patrick Nolan (formerly known as “pnoles”), and I’ll be recapping some Irish hoops games here this season.

Unfortunately, my first game on recap duty was a much less happy affair than the rout of Stonehill or the exhibition thrashing of Purdue-Fort Wayne. The Buffalo Bulls came in to this contest at 2-0 off of winning a nail-biter against Old Dominion, but ranked in the bottom 50 of the country by KenPom, so this was expected to be a tune-up game more than anything else. It turned out to be anything but that.

One concern that presented itself in the Stonehill contest from last Wednesday was that the Irish have been much less effective so far this season at defending the three point line. They leaked 11 made threes to the Skyhawks on 31 mostly-quality attempts, which represents a far cry from what was a considerable strength for the Irish defense last year. That continued to be the story against Buffalo, as too often their shooters were able to catch the ball behind the arc with a tremendous amount of space, often due to slow recovery time on pick-and-roll plays.

The game had an odd feel to it from the get-go, with the first three Irish possessions featuring one three-point attempt from Kebba Njie (miss) and two from Tae Davis (1-for-2). Davis scored the first 8 points for Notre Dame on the strength of that three and his trademark hustle and athleticism. However, a three-pointer and a post bucket from Bulls freshman big-man Tim Oboe kept the game knotted up at 8-8 at the early going.

The Irish appeared to right the ship shortly after that juncture. Three consecutive fast breaks, two keyed off steals by Markus Burton and Davis, gave the Irish a 14-8 lead at the first timeout. However, the Irish would relinquish that lead during a sloppy sequence that featured a Burton errant pass, a Davis bricked three, a Njie basket interference call, and a hilariously misguided attempt by Njie to throw an alley-oop to J.R. Konieczny that thudded above the square on the backboard. The Bulls took a 21-20 lead that forced Micah Shrewsberry to call timeout just ahead of the 8:00 minute mark.

The only plus side was that amidst all that, this happened:

The struggles continued through the end of the half, as the Irish failed to check Buffalo sharpshooter Ryan Sabol (Riley Leonard’s cousin, per the broadcast!), who netted four triples in the first half. The Bulls also got a big lift from reserve big man Fredriks Meinarts, who made his only two three-point attempts plus a bucket at the rim. At the lowest point, Buffalo led 37-30 before a late spurt driven by Konieczny tightened things up. Notre Dame trailed 40-38 at the half.

The Irish came out of the halftime locker room with considerably better energy. Notre Dame got contributions from all of their starters (aside from a remarkably quiet Matt Allocco) during a thundering 24-2 run to start the second half. Most critically, the Irish cracked down on the Bulls’ shooters, and other than Shrewsberry failing to get around one screen set for Sabol, they stopped allowing easy looks from deep.

Unfortunately, that run didn’t quite put it away. Despite some Shrewsberry buckets keeping the Irish offense moving with Burton on the bench, the reserves didn’t show the same tenacity at stopping the three. The Bulls’ Ben Michaels knocked down three triples in less than a minute, thanks to more of the same over-helping that plagued the Irish in the first half (Nikita Konstantynovskyi was a significant culprit during this run). The Bulls squeezed the lead down to 11 before the the under-12-minute timeout.

Some cold shooting from Notre Dame allowed the Bulls time to grind the lead down to eight, which put some game pressure on the Irish to start the final eight minutes. That meant Markus Burton time. The ball didn’t leave Burton’s hands often during this four-minute stretch, and he recovered from a couple near-misses at the rim to hit back-to-back buckets on drives and dish to Davis for an and-one to stabilize things. Davis carried things for the Irish the rest of the way, scoring 13 points on dunks, layups and free throws (12-13 for the game) down the stretch to finish with a game-high 27. This one was particularly nice:

The Irish never put Buffalo away, but Buffalo never got the lead back under 7, either.

Coach Shrewsberry will have plenty of things to yell about discuss with his players in advance of the team’s first true test against Georgetown on Saturday.

Bullet points:

• Njie’s strong opening game gave way to a pretty uneven one. His screen/roll game was on point and he showed good chemistry with Burton; half of Burton’s assists were Njie dunks. He otherwise played poorly, getting cooked on defense in the first half, leaking threes on screen/rolls, leading the team in turnovers, and failing to finish much of anything with a defender near him.
• Sir Mohammed is very much a work-in-progress out there. He had a nice block and a crafty assist to Njie under the hoop, but turned the ball over a couple times and doesn’t look comfortable shooting. What’s more, the Bulls seemed content to sag off of him in the corner and at the elbow (!) in the second half, which will make him a spacing issue until he proves otherwise.
• Julian Roper seems like a candidate to drop out of the rotation. He played four minutes, but never entered the box score.
• Micah Shrewsberry’s out-of-bounds plays under the hoop are loaded with activity and options. On a particularly nice one, Braeden got a wide-open corner three on some activity that looked like the play Mike Brey ran every time, except he was the third guy to make his cut, rather than the only one.
• Burton flirted with a triple-double, finishing with 19 points, 9 rebounds, and 8 assists.
• I don’t know what Logan Imes does here.