Another loss as formulaic as a mediocre 80’s sitcom
The Notre Dame Fighting Irish looked to get back into the win column against the Virginia Tech Hokies Saturday afternoon. The Hokies are yet another team analytically worse than Notre Dame but actually ahead of them in the standings, where it matters. It was a good opportunity to pick up a win back at home, but — stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the Irish let a big early lead disappear and then couldn’t save themselves from letting everything slip away in the final four minutes.
It was an inauspicious start when Markus Burton launched a three that wound up very short and the Hokies wound up getting an untouched alley-oop for Tobi Lawal. A nice screen/roll play from Tae Davis to Kebba Njie resulted in a dunk for the latter, and Davis almost made it two in a row when he attempted to physically destroy the hoop on the next possession. The ball bounced off the rim so high that it went offscreen.
While that attempt at building momentum failed, a Njie block on the next possession and a nice pass from Burton to Sir Mohammed for a layup (getting him off his 0-for-7 slide from Florida State) kept the good times humming. Davis got a reverse layup out of some nice footwork to put the Irish up 8-4 at the first break.
Some sloppy basketball ensued for both teams out of the timeout, but it was the Irish who capitalized first when Hokies guard Brandon Rechsteiner had the ball slip out of his hands, which led to a Davis easy transition bucket. Virginia Tech was having a miserable time getting shots to fall and taking care of the ball, allowing Burton to stretch the lead to eight with a nice pivot move near the hoop. Mohammed would fall down and lose the ball the next trip down, but after the Irish recovered, he tipped in a Nikita Konstanynovskyi miss to make the lead an even ten. The next trip down, Konstantynovskyi got redemption when Burton threw him a beautiful no-look pass as he plowed down the lane for an easy bucket.
A Sir Mohammed block got the ball back for the Irish. He found a wide open driving lane and made a nice dish to Garrett Sundra for a layup when the help came. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech was 2-for-15 from the field with a bucketload of turnovers to show for their efforts. It was a 12-0 run for Notre Dame, and they led 18-4 with ten minutes to go in the half.
Jaydon Young mercifully put in a layup for the hapless Hokies on the next possession down, which kicked off an 8-0 run for Virginia Tech. Burton would answer with a tough driving layup on the other end, but the Hokies answered with the first three of the ballgame over 13 minutes in. Tae Davis (Tae Davis!) would answer on the other end with a triple, but the Irish leaked another alley-oop to Lawal, which cut the Irish lead to six. A bank shot by Ben Hammond dropped it to four on the next trip down, and after a Cole Certa turnover, the Hokies got a fast-break layup to get the deficit to two.
Meanwhile, the Irish turnovers had started to pile up, hitting 11 with just over a minute left in the half. Aside from Burton putting in another tough layup on a drive and Davis getting a post shot over a smaller defender, Notre Dame possessions were generally empty during this stretch. The silver lining was that Virginia Tech luckily went cold again in the closing minutes of the half, and Burton was able to stretch the lead to 33-26 at the half by hitting a long two with six seconds left.
The second half opened with Lawal missing a pair of free throws, giving free nachos to the students. Davis stretched the lead to nine by making a pair of his own on the other end. The Hokies would miss three decent looks from three in this first stretch of the half, dropping them to 2-for-18 for the game (Notre Dame was pretty lucky here). Burton would draw the fourth foul on Hammond, but other than that bit of progress, the Irish didn’t have much going on offense to capitalize.
Konstantynovskyi would make a layup at the 14:55 mark of the half to finally give the Irish their first field goal of the second half. After a Hokies turnover, Burton would pop a three from the top of the key, seemingly through the outstretched hand of Tyler Johnson to stretch the lead to 10. Ben Burnham would respond with a rare Virginia Tech three point make, but Davis answered with a blow-by for a layup.
Meanwhile, Burton had to head to the locker room to address a cut above his right eye, leaving the Irish to search for offense with their star missing and Shrewsberry still sitting on a goose egg. Njie dribbled hard to the basket and went up soft, as usual, but managed to draw a foul to extend the lead to 11 and buy Burton some time. Davis would get some free throws a few plays later to keep the team treading water, but the Hokies were applying some pressure by getting to the line a few times themselves. Mohammed did his weird but usual lose-his-balance-while-attempting-a-wild-layup thing and Jaden Schutt dropped a three to get the deficit to five.
Fortunately, Burton returned after this stretch with 10 minutes to play and made a jumper from the elbow on his second Irish possession to stop an extended field goal drought, but the going was still rough. Njie and Mohammed combined to fumble a handoff, and Lawal would make a tough layup as the shot clock expired to cut the Irish lead to three. Njie would make another couple important free throws as Poteat fouled him as he tried to rebound a wild Markus Burton missed layup, but Rechsteiner responded with a three. The nervousness really began to set in.
Still with zero points, a desperate Shrewsberry launched a terrible step-back three to give the ball back to Virginia Tech. Lawal went hard to the hoop and got fouled by Roper, who rotated late, and made one of two. Then, after bringing the ball up, Njie tried to make a simple pass to Burton 26 feet from the hoop and tossed it wide of him, and it went out of bounds while he threw his hands up as if it were someone else’s fault. Burton stole the ball back, kicking off a fast break, but Logan Imes, who was in the game for…reasons, I guess, got swatted into oblivion on a reverse layup attempt.
A horrible bricked three by Johnson gave the Irish a break, and Burton got a jumper to roll around the rim and in to push the lead to three. Rechsteiner missed a three, but Burnham put back the rebound for a dunk. After Burton missed on his next drive, Burnham attempted to give the Irish yet another break by putting up a terrible three, but Lawal put the rebound back for another dunk (this was apparently coach Mike Young’s new offense) with 3:09 to play to give the Hokies their first lead of the game since it was 2-0. Time is a flat circle.
The Irish would fail to score on all three attempts of their next possession, as Shrewsberry missed yet another shot attempt, Burton got swatted going to the hoop, and Davis missed a wild fadeaway after getting away with an offensive foul. Burnham would get wide open in the corner on the next possession to drill a three, extending the Virginia Tech lead to four with 1:58 remaining. Big trouble.
On the next possession, Burton kicked out to a wide open Roper, who refused to shoot the ball. He drove to the lane and instead of taking a shot, kicked it out to Burton and got fouled in the process with the Irish in the double bonus. Against absolutely all odds, Roper knocked them both down. The Irish then buckled down and played a great defensive possession, leading to a terrible three point attempt from Rechsteiner. 1:19 to go, Irish down two.
Burton got a decent look at a jumper early in the next Irish possession, but missed it, giving possession back to the Hokies. Lawal drove to the hoop and got bumped by Njie, but missed the layup after the borderline no-call, giving the Irish another chance. Burton would get a great look in the lane on the next trip down, but the ball painfully rimmed out, giving it back to the Hokies with 36 seconds to go. Micah Shrewsberry opted to foul Rechsteiner in an attempt to extend the game.
Rechsteiner made the first and missed the second, but the Hokies managed to back-tap the ball and Jaden Schutt saved it from going out of bounds. The Irish had to foul Rechsteiner again, and this time he made them both to extend the lead to five. Shrewsberry would badly miss a decent look at a layup, but Njie would put it back for a dunk with 18 seconds to play. Rechsteiner would put in two more free throws, but Tae Davis (Tae Davis!) made a pure three with 7.4 seconds to go, dropping the deficit to two.
Unfortunately, the Irish weren’t able to make anyone else catch the ball on the inbounds, and Rechsteiner calmly knocked down to more free throws with 4.6 seconds left, which sealed the Irish fate. Shrewsberry airballed a three-point attempt that was caught by Certa for a layup for his first points, but that was all she wrote. I’d say that the Irish found another way to lose a close game, but it’s basically been the same formula every time. They’re not even creative.
Bullet Points
- Kebba Njie plays very often like he has two left hands. In the first few possessions of the game, he failed to catch a Burton feed for a dunk, and then dropped a defensive rebound out of bounds. A lot of his issues would dissipate if he could just catch the ball clean an acceptable percentage of the time.
- Braeden Shrewsberry, not typically known for his defense, had some good moments at that end of the floor early on in the game. He stripped the ball off of a Virginia Tech player’s knee to stop a fast break bucket and had a very nice high-effort close-out of a wide open corner three, which wound up missing badly.
- Of course, Shrewsberry finished with zero points, so whatever.
- Julian Roper and Jayden Young got heated at each other when wrestling over a loose ball on the floor. It looked like Roper intentionally hit him with an elbow or a forearm in the struggle, and he was called for a technical foul.
- J.R. Konieczny appeared late in the first half of this game after not playing in the last one.
- Shrewsberry subbed out Roper on offense in the closing minute of the game, and it was Cole Certa who got the call to replace him.
- The Irish logged 17 turnovers against just 9 assists, which reflects the feeling that they were throwing it to the other team more than themselves.