Notre Dame will play for its second ACC Championship in 3 years on Saturday night.
Let it sink in.
Notre Dame is making a trip back to the ACC Tournament Final.
It wasn’t always pretty Friday night. Despite carrying a double digit lead for most of the evening, matters were still in doubt until nearly midnight. However, the Fighting Irish held on to defeat the Florida State Seminoles 77-73. Now 6-0 in the Barclay’s Center, Mike Brey has to quickly turn the page to prepare for a showdown with his old boss.
As far as Friday’s game went, it was a clear tale of two halves. Rolling on the momentum they built against Virginia, the Irish built a 16 point halftime lead. They were unbelievable from behind the arc in the first half. ND was 8-15 in the first half with Vasturia making both his attempts and both Matt Ryan and Matt Farrell hitting 2 of 3. Matt Ryan made the most of his seven first half minutes, scoring eight points and doing good work on the defensive end. I had a sneaking suspicion he could be an unexpected weapon, and he took full advantage of his opportunity.
Notre Dame used exterior sharp shooting and a new-wrinkle zone defense to take the air out of Leonard Hamilton’s squad in the first half. The long and high-flying Seminoles forced only 3 turnovers in the first half and blocked a single shot. They committed 10 turnovers themselves and went 0-7 from deep. Brey employed a 1-2-2 (or 3-2) zone look in the first half. It is the first time we’ve seen an odd-front zone from Notre Dame all season, and it clearly rattled the Seminoles. They settled for jumpers, and as long as ND was able to clear the defensive glass, it worked to perfection. Like many of you, I’m not a fan of zone defenses, but it is nice to have a another tool to throw out there when you need it. In particular, the Irish communicated and slid well in that look, and it took FSU out of their game.
The second half opened pretty well and the Irish looked OK through the first two 4-minute segments. Unfortunately, one of their patented droughts nearly cost the Irish. The Irish took a 13 point lead at 70-57 with 6:27 remaining in the game. They scored a whopping 2 points over the next 5:33. They let FSU climb all the way back in the game with some missed lay-ups and poor offensive possessions. Meanwhile, FSU’s Brian Angola-Rodas decided to simply go off. He went 4-7 from deep on a way to a career high 17 points. He nearly dragged his team all the way back with a few contested and deep makes.
Despite a season of easily icing games from the line, tonight, the Irish found themselves missing key FT’s. They ended the game a chilly 61.5% from the line. That’s a disturbing trend, but also gives Brey and the staff a chance to get the team re-focused on attention to those details. My old HS coach used to say it was always easy to “teach aggressively” when you’re winning.
The Numbers
After Thursday’s 59 possession game against Virginia, Friday felt like a track meet. There were 72 possessions Friday. From a four factors perspective, you knew the Irish were going to need to shoot well in this game and take care of the ball to win. They did exactly that. Notre Dame held the edge in eFG 59%/55% and in turnover percentage 12.4/24.9. FSU held the edge in offensive rebounding, gathering 31% of their misses to only 8.6% for ND. The Seminoles also got the to he line at a higher rate with a 28% FTR to ND’s 22%.
To beat a more athletic team, the Irish need to be efficient. You need to make sure that their superiority on the glass doesn’t lead to dramatically more shot attempts than you get. Not only did ND outshoot FSU, but they actually got 2 more FG attempts up on Friday night. They held FSU to only 9 offensive boards and forced 18 turnovers. Meanwhile, they had one of their signature performances, giving up only 9 turnovers of their own. That’s how you beat teams with efficiency.
Performances
You have to start any conversation about the Irish with their senior captain. Steve Vasturia had an outstanding floor game. He made plays all over the place. His stat line reads 18 points on 7-9 shooting (4-5 from deep), 2 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and a block. It is the perfect little-bit-of-everything from ND’s little-bit-of-everything guy. I’m so excited that Vasturia gets to play his ACC career out to the very end.
Vasturia’s classmate V.J. Beachem was a little off Friday, presumably saving his daggers for the final. He was only 1-6 from deep and 2-9 overall, but he collected seven critical defensive rebounds and was solid on defense the entire night. Rebounding and defending against NBA size and athleticism while in the spotlight is a wise career move.
Matt Farrell loves being home. Something about the city clearly drives this guy. He went 36 minutes, scored 15 points on 6-15 shooting and had 6 assists. It was another swaggy game from the Jersey native. Of course, he’d love to get that front-end FT miss back, but he’ll hopefully have plenty of opportunities to atone on Saturday.
Rex Pflueger once again opened the scoring for the Irish with an early three ball. Rex was 2-3 from deep and 2-3 from the charity stripe for 8 points. Most importantly, he found 5 defensive boards and played smart, effective defense all night. He made a spectacularly crafty and athletic steal late to seal the win.
T.J. Gibbs, Martinas Geben and Austin Torres all saw between 4-9 minutes each. None had anything go spectacularly well or awful. Generally all contributed well.
Welcome to the party Matt Ryan. It was great to see the sophomore jump out there and surprise people with an early drive and finish from the corner. After that, Ryan stroked a gorgeous three. Of course, he did throw up one questionable heat-check. To his credit, he bounced back after and made two more. The most spectacular of the night was a second half triple from the corner that featured a tough catch around the knees and a quick, pure trigger. He could just be that weapon that comes out of nowhere for Brey in March.
Finally, it all comes down to the Irish MVP and should-have-been ACC PoY, Bonzie Colson. He missed out on the double-double with only 6 rebounds, but his 18 points tied Vasturia for team high. He was a solid 7-13 from the floor and 4-6 from the stripe. Bonzie is clearly a guy who loves the bright lights and he delivered again on the big stage.
The only thing that frustrated me about Colson’s play was his lack of assertiveness late. There were several possessions during ND’s scoring drought where Colson was defended by FSU’s Christ Koumadje. FSU was in a man defense, and the Irish had them spread out. Bonzie needs to lift above the FT line in that situation and face up a defender who could never stay with him off the bounce. I’m not a big fan of ISO-ball, but that was an instance where Brey needs to clear that out and let his guy go to work. If Hamilton wanted to try to keep the 7’4″ Koumadje in the game, Brey and Colson should have made him pay.
Big Picture
While this was a double digit beat down masquerading as a four-point victory, it really doesn’t matter. Survive and advance. Despite the drought and missed FT’s, the Irish are playing some wonderful basketball. Advancing to the ACC Tournament Final is a great accomplishment in and of itself. Doing it while adding a few new weapons to your arsenal is even better.
Coach Brey had to borrow a '15 ACC title ring to make a point after the game.
There is another one in reach tomorrow night. pic.twitter.com/JhMYdkNQs8— Notre Dame MBB (@NDmbb) March 11, 2017
The wrinkles with Ryan and the 1-2-2 were excellent adjustments by Brey and the staff. If people were concerned about the loss of Martin Inglesby and Anthony Solomon from the bench, worry no more. The Irish had a perfect plan for Virginia, and even better wrinkles for FSU. This trip to Brooklyn has been a coaching master-class so far, and who could ask for a better final exam than one against the old teacher? (or is it preacher?)
Thanks for the quick writeup Joe! Big win for the irish, and even a bigger win for Steve Vasturia. I think it was big for him to see a 3 go in early in the game. Without his excellent shooting night, and all around game, I’m pretty sure we don’t win. Here’s to Steve finishing out his ACC career in style tomorrow night against the Dukies. Question becomes, what jersey do we pull out for the championship game? Mustard, green, or traditional blue/white? I’m guessing duke will come out in their blues, so I think we’ll counter with gold.
Dear God, please let the Irish kick Duke in the fork tomorrow night. Amen.
Disappointed that I didn’t get to watch any of this one. Again, all icing on the cake.
Wow, credit to Brey for pulling that zone out of thin air. It worked to perfection in the first half. I would have liked to have seen him mix in some man in the second half when they went on their run (or perhaps even sooner, when we had a string of possessions where we traded 3s back and forth). If Brey is going to employ zone this postseason, I still hope it’s for short bursts only (and not at all against Duke, unless it’s just the few minutes Ryan is on the court).
What a game from Steve. I wonder if having to give a little less focus on defense freed up Vasturia and Ryan on offense, or if it was just a night where they were both feeling it.
Finally, fantastic job of avoiding the shot blockers. We didn’t abandon the dribble drive at all, but we focused on kicking out to open shooters or pulling up for jumpers (or that weird line drive floater thing that Steve somehow banked home hard off the glass). The executions of a fantastic game plan was impressive for 90% of the night. Well done by both the staff and players.
Stop the presses. We both liked a zone.
That odd-man front 1-2-2 worked brilliantly. I was trying to figure out how much of the success was attributable to it being a good defense and how much of it goes to just being something that FSU hadn’t seen and wasn’t smart enough (and/or had good enough coaching) to handle. Part of me thinks ANY random D we switched into that they hadn’t seen (box and 1, even though it would make no sense?) might have confused them enough for a few possessions at at time.
I do think we could have shifted in and out of it a little more often to keep them confused in the second half, but I’m not really complaining.
Can we move the goalposts now? I know tournament matchups make a difference and there is always a little luck but anything less than the sweet 16 will be a pretty big disappointment after that we’ve done so far.
I see right now we’ve moved up to a 4 seed on espn’s bracketology (and Duke to a 2 seed). Any chance with a win we move up to a 3 seed?
No.
And probably not.
I’ll be posting something tomorrow morning on our seeding chances, but the general answer is “pretty unlikely”. We just dug ourselves too big of a hole with a lack of big wins before this week to catch up to the top 12 teams. It would take a ton of ACC respect by the committee to slot us ahead of teams like Baylor, Arizona, Oregon or Kentucky and that’s what would be needed.
We’ll grant that Kansas / UNC / Nova / Zaga / UCLA / Duke (even if we beat them tonight) are ahead of us. That leaves two final 2-seeds plus all of the 3-seeds open for business. Right now, we’d have to pass five of West Virginia / Louisville / FSU / Baylor / Arizona / Oregon / Kentucky / Florida / Butler / Purdue to climb to the #12 spot.
I think we’re probably ahead of Florida and Purdue right now (as well as Cincinnati and SMU to a lesser degree, who are right behind us).
Are any of those possible? If you added a win over Duke, we’d be 2-4 vs. the KenPom top 10 and 3-3 vs. the KP top 11-25 (Duke is currently 12th). The link below is a picture (easiest way to do a table, but I don’t think I can add a picture here) of all of the records of those teams at the moment (using KP rankings).
Records:
If you squint just right, you can probably find the case that ND should pass multiple of those teams, but it’s going to be tough to pass enough to get to the #3 line. KP is not a big fan of the P12 and has UCLA/Oregon/Arizona all between 16 and 21, so keep in mind that the records listed give less credit than the committee likely will. More people give Kentucky and Louisville credit than I think they deserve, but even if the record table says it should be close with us/them, I doubt we get that edge. I could see us catching Baylor or Florida St. but that last one to jump will be tough to find.
Like I said, more analysis after tonight’s game, but the good news is that it’s even a conversation at this point.
If UK loses today, I could see us jumping them. They basically have 2 impressive wins all season. Would love to get that 3 seed, but agreed, I don’t see it happening. Really the best thing we have going for us is just 1 bad loss.
FWIW CBS still has us as a 5 seed (and only the third best 5 seed).
BUT OMG KAINTUCKEE YOOTS! Also, this is great, but can we get back the important things, like who is going to play 3rd string placekick holder? Dammit people!