If you’ve been under a rock or just completely rely on 18 Stripes for your basketball coverage, we’ve got some bad news for you. After treading water and even looking occasionally strong through for a few games without senior captains Bonzie Colson and Matt Farrell, things took a nose dive over the last week.

North Carolina

First, Georgia Tech took advantage of a flu-ridden Rex Pflueger to hand the Irish their first conference loss. Following the trip to Atlanta, the Irish returned home for what looked to be a winnable but difficult game against the North Carolina Tarheels. Despite most counting the shorthanded Irish out, someone forgot to tell the guys on the floor. Again playing without Farrell, the Irish hung in and traded blows UNC, before being on the short end of numerous foul calls that left players, announcers, coaches and fans incredulous. Even withstanding the officiating, the Notre Dame’s TJ Gibbs had two tries to win in the waning seconds, but neither would go down and the Irish dropped their second straight. The writers here at 18 Stripes, being fans as well, tried to pump out a recap, but since it was mostly just a string of expletives at the referees it didn’t quite meet the readability we strive for. We apologize for not having a recap for you to read and ask that you send all complaints over not having one to @theACC.

Louisville

Following that heart-breaker, the Irish welcomed (using that term loosely) the Rick Pitino-less Louisville Cardinals on Tuesday night and also welcomed back Matt Farrell to the starting lineup. He showed up early in the first half, dropping long shots and yelling “I’m back!” to Rece Davis and rest of press row.

The fun would be short lived however, because star freshman DJ Harvey crumpled to the ground clutching his knee after coming down with a rebound with about five minutes left in the first half. After the trainers helped carry him to the locker room, the Irish proceeded to blow the 10 point lead they had built. Questions about the number of minutes Farrell could provide in his first game back turned out to be warranted, as he wore down throughout the game, but he couldn’t come off the floor because Rex Pflueger fouled out in just 26 minutes of action.

Still, the Irish fought on. In a tie game, Farrell had an opportunity to win it at the end of regulation but missed. In the first overtime, Farrell again had an opportunity to win it and air-balled. At the end of the 2nd overtime, down two, Gibbs came up short on an ill-advised drive and Louisville escaped. Now the Irish are left to pick up the pieces of a season quickly coming apart at the seams.

Injury Situation

Matt Farrell is back and looks no worse for the wear, but after both he and Gibbs went 48 minutes on Tuesday, the break until Saturday, followed by a full week long break is a good omen. On top of that, no news is good news for head bench cheerleader Bonzie Colson. The ESPN crew seemed optimistic that Bonzie would be back in uniform before the end of the year.

And all things considered, the injury news on Wednesday was about as good as could be hoped. Instead of losing DJ Harvey for the season, as was feared, the result was a bone bruise which will keep him out for ~4 weeks. Notionally, 4 weeks puts him back in time for the road trip to Boston College on Feb 17th.

Losing Harvey for 7 games will definitely hurt. We’ll dive into which games he’s likely to miss and what that means for our chances below, but the Irish offense looked stagnant and unimaginative without Harvey, especially once Pflueger left the floor for good.

In the 4 games since Farrell went down, Harvey averaged 7 rebounds in 30 minutes and was one of the few players on the floor who could handle the ball in most situations. Gaining Farrell and losing Harvey would seem to be a net positive in terms of ball handling, but both Farrell and Gibbs play the same role. Harvey, Pflueger and potentially Nik Djogo are the only wings who have shown an ability to put the ball on the deck, and that may loom large over the next month.

How Good is Notre Dame, Really?

Through the first six games of the ACC schedule, the Irish are 3-3. With 12 games remaining, let’s take a look at what’s realistically on tap for Notre Dame over the next 12 games in 6.5 weeks in the ACC grind.

When Bonzie and Farrell went down, the Irish had already slipped to 28th in Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency ranking system after a lackluster December and poor showing at home versus Georgia Tech. Without the senior captains, the Irish got two inspired efforts in a row, beating NC State by 30 and stealing a win at Syracuse, which inflated the Irish ranking to 14th. Since then, the Irish have fallen hard, back to 25th in the country as a composite on the season.

But how good are the Irish for the rest of the regular season? Much of that #25 rating was earned with players who won’t be available for chunks of the rest of the season and the energy bounce that comes with bench players getting their first shot at more minutes, and is not sustainable.

One (very speculative) way to try to determine the Irish’s spot in the ACC pecking order is to look at Las Vegas game lines. Headed into our home game with Louisville, the Irish were 3 point favorites. Accounting for home floor and with both Farrell and Harvey in the lineup, that means that the books believed that Notre Dame and Louisville were about equal. As a result, it would make sense to pretend that with DJ Harvey, Notre Dame was closer to #36 (the Cardinal’s rank headed into Tuesday night) than #25. Now that DJ Harvey is out for 4 weeks, we can probably downgrade the Irish a little further for those games. For sake of discussion, let’s assume the Irish are in the 40-45 range for that stretch, about halfway between the group of Florida St (27)/Miami (30)/Louisville (30) and Virginia Tech (48)/Syracuse (47).

Goal of a Tournament Bid

For most of the last 18 years, the goal has been to make the tournament. Mike Brey and his team’s efforts over the last 3 have helped to raise that bar, but it seems like a reasonable threshold to use. Brey, his players and reporters close to the team seem to think 9-9 is probably good enough to make the tournament and I’m mostly inclined to agree. So lets map out what it would take to get there.

Adjusting the KP Winning % for our lowered rank due to injury, and then sorting into three buckets provides a pretty clear view.

There are four games, including this Saturday’s that Notre Dame probably doesn’t have any business winning, and two games that they just can’t drop. The other six fall into the “winnable” category, where the Irish are likely to be slight favorites but could easily drop any of them. At 3-3 already, the Irish need six wins. Two of those 6 come from the easy category, which means Brey’s squad needs to go 4-2 vs. the “winnable” category or 3-3 plus steal a win on the road against one of the best ACC squads.

One important thing of note: 3 of the 4 “steal” games are going to be without DJ Harvey. If you were hoping the freshman was going to be able to cut his teeth against good teams on the road this year, he’s likely to miss most of his big opportunities. On the flip side, if we’re projecting Harvey to be back for the last 5 games of the year, 3 of those 5 are in that middle bucket where the Irish’s season will be defined. As a result, it’s conceivable for the Irish to go 2-5 over the next 7 games and still be in position to run off wins against average competition with Harvey back to make the tournament. It’s certainly not an ideal scenario, but it’s feasible. Even if the Irish struggle mightily without Harvey for the next month, the ship won’t have sunk quite yet.

What To Watch For

To wrap up, I thought I’d provide a couple of ideas of things I’m looking for over the remaining month and a half of the conference season. Given the injuries, we’re going to see a lot of young players making young player mistakes and hopefully growing from them. We’re also likely to see strange lineups, big runs and big droughts, but here’s a few things to watch both for this season and for future ones…

  • Can TJ Gibbs evolve his basketball IQ and crispness of his passes as he matures? At the moment, he plays a little out of control and his passes often seem just a hair off precise when trying to hit shooters. If he’s going to be the primary ball handler next season, it would be great to see him continue to evolve while getting major minutes this year.
  • Will either of John Mooney or Elijah Burns step up and earn Mike Brey’s trust? Right now Mooney has the edge, getting significantly more minutes than Burns, but that may change as Brey needs additional rebounders with Harvey out. Mooney often feels like a Matt Ryan Redux, with dumb errors and long distances splashes woven together. His confidence appeared to have been shaken from some rough early outings, but a few key buckets against Louisville might help him get going, which would be a huge boon to the Irish chances.
  • How much will Djogo evolve? Throughout the offseason, the whispers of Nik Djogo, super athlete made us giddy with excitement. Once he got significant minutes in games against real teams, we got to see behind the curtain and the results should have been expected. He clearly is athletic, quick and bouncy, just like the reports said, but he was also immediately over-matched by the big boy game on the ACC stage. I compared him to an 8th grader getting called up to play with the HS and still thinking all of the moves that made him a star on the lower level would work here. Not so fast. He’s already shown signs of settling into his role and being able to pick his spots which bodes well long term. He’s started hitting shots, including a major clutch 3 in overtime against Louisville (even if it went for naught).
  • My final one is one that I’m not looking to see happen, but already know exists. The fight in this team through 4 games without either of their senior captains was impressive, as was their fight into double OT while short handed and hit with another major injury on Tuesday night. A Mike Brey team rolling on defense and rebounding? I’m looking forward to watching this team continue to evolve and do whatever is necessary to stay in games and hopefully pull some out.

The good news is that regardless of what happens this year, we know we’re in good hands with Mike Brey. Last year if you had told me that we’d be relying on Martinas Geben racking double doubles on 20+ points, I’d have laughed. But he’s just another in a long line of revelations on this team which provides a pretty incredible level of comfort with where things are headed.

That’s the four main things I’m looking to monitor the rest of the way. What other key aspects of this team are you watching? Let us know in the comments below! Go Irish, Beat Tigers.