If you were looking for a how-to guide for losing to a motivated mid-major, the Irish provided it on Tuesday night. The Irish lost 80-77 at home to the Ball State Cardinals, and were lucky it was that close. The big story will be the ending when Tayler Parsons hit a contested three with 1.7 seconds left immediately after Matt Farrell’s own three that tied the game at 77. Despite the late run by the Irish, this game was lost far earlier than the last twenty seconds.
Slow Starts Continue
For the fourth straight game, the Irish offense was nowhere to be found out of the gate. This was understandable against Wichita State and Michigan State, but it continued against 300+ KenPom rated St. Francis on Sunday. Last night, the Irish trailed by five at halftime, and failed to crack 30 points at the break. ND had a five minute FG drought from 11:19 to 6:19 in the middle of the half where they looked totally lost on offense. Whether it’s a focus issue, energy issue, or something else, it’s becoming a worrying trend.
Rebounding
The Cardinals outrebounded the Irish 36-24 including a 12-4 advantage on the offensive glass. Again, this is excusable against a front-line like Michigan State’s; it’s not against a MAC team. This wasn’t a bunch of long-rebounds bouncing out to Cardinal shooters on the perimeter either. The Irish didn’t box out at the rim, and gave the Cardinals easy put-backs, tip-ins, and allowed them to extend possessions. John Mooney led the Irish with seven boards, while three Cardinals matched, or exceeded that number. The Irish guards didn’t help out their bigs either. Farrell, TJ Gibbs, Rex Pflueger, and DJ Harvey combined for just six boards. Ball State’s guards grabbed 16.
Free Throw Shooting
While the free throw shooting wasn’t awful, it isn’t the weapon that it was last season. ND shot a respectable 73% from the line going 19/26 which was right at their season average. On the negative side, TJ Gibbs shot just 50% from the stripe (3/6). This included back-to-back missed FTs at the end of the first half when the Irish had a chance to tie or take the lead when trailing 30-29. Bonzie Colson also shot just 6/9 from the line which trailed his average from last season. Mooney also missed a critical FT late in the game. Currently, Marty Geben leads the Irish in FT%, and he wasn’t on the floor at the end of the game. Colson and Gibbs have shot the most FTs for ND, and are currently the two worst FT shooters of the starters. On Tuesday, Ball State shot 87.5% missing just two attempts. Had the Irish matched them, they’d have won.
Lack of Bench Contributions
Entering the season, Elijah Burns was the first guy up off the bench. On Tuesday night, he got a DNP. DJ Harvey, who’s averaged close to 20 minutes per game, looked totally lost in his seven minutes. Mooney, who was clearly behind Harvey and Burns in Maui, played a career high 19 minutes against the Cardinals, and was on the floor in crunch time. Austin Torres played a minute in the second half, and was a foul away from a trillion. The bench was a question mark coming into the season, and scored just six points against Ball State. That’s not going to cut it on a night when two or more of the starters have off nights.
End of Half Execution
At the end of the first half, the Irish inbounded the ball with 31 seconds left trailing by three. Instead of taking the last shot, John Mooney missed a three with 10 seconds left on the clock. Ball State grabbed the board, and ND gave up a buzzer beater on the other end. At the end of the game, the Irish were a stop away from forcing overtime, but didn’t get it done. As good as the Irish were in game situations on defense against Wichita State, they blew it against Ball State.
Trigger Warning
🚨HUGE UPSET ALERT!!!!🚨
TAYLER PERSONS’ GO AHEAD 3⃣ WITH 1.7 SECONDS LEFT IS EVEN BETTER WITH TITANIC MUSIC!!! BALL STATE WINS IN SOUTH BEND!!! WHAT A SHOT!!!! (@BALLSTATESPORTS @BALLSTATEMBB)
🏀🚢🎶 pic.twitter.com/rnS7QhdSf8
— 🏀🚢🎶TITANIC HOOPS🏀🚢🎶 (@TitanicHoops) December 6, 2017
Small Silver Lining
Despite playing terrible for most of the game, the Irish had a chance to get the game to overtime. They didn’t quit, and fought hard in the second half. On offense, they made winning plays down the stretch and gave themselves a chance to escape. Marty Geben had another solid game scoring 12 points on 8 FGA and was a perfect 4/4 from the line. Rex Pflueger had a decent game as well scoring 11 on 8 FGA. This team is still (probably) a tournament team, and they can finish high in the ACC. It’s still the first week of December, and the Irish have numerous big games left on the schedule. That said, the glow of Maui is all but gone, and the fanbase can pump the brakes on Final Four talk.
A few thoughts on the second half (as I missed the first half), some ok, mostly unhappy, as might be expected:
– There’s no way Mooney should be getting the run he was, no? He seems to be a liability on the offensive end and the defensive end. What exactly does that leave?
– Gibbs looked like Matt Ryan at points out there, in the sense that there were a number of possessions where it looked like once he touched the ball there was a zero percent chance he was going to pass it, even with plenty of time left on the shot clock. It seemed out of character? Or have I just not noticed that before, but it’s part of his game? In any case, he’s not nearly good enough to play that way.
– Farrell looked ok in the second half, almost not taking enough shots given is relative productivity (in part because Gibbs was not passing the ball much). I would hope going forward he is a higher-volume player.
– Pflueger looked solid. His defense on the dagger 3 was fine; dude just nailed a great shot.
– Against good or better teams, we’re probably going to have the 9th and 10th best players on the floor at any given point in the game, because there’s a major dropoff after Pflueger. That’s… not great.
-Who would you play over Mooney though? Harvey was terrible. Burns has shown me nothing. And all Torres does now is foul. The bench looks like a wasteland. I don’t think Mooney is good, and I hope Harvey comes around, but man we have rotation issues.
-Those drives at the end were absurd. I saw him do that a few times against MSU too. He has to learn how to kick it out when he drives if the defense collapses.
-I do wonder how good Geben is going to be against teams that can actually match his brute size. I’ve been impressed so far, and I still think our starting 5 has the potential to compete with just about any other starting 5 (Farrell has to be better though). But our bench is nothing, and that has me worried.
– I was pretty surprised Mooney was playing in crunch time, but he looked okay most of the game. Geben has been really solid, and he’s a better defender than Mooney. Since both guys are probably the 4th or 5th option on offense, why not play the better defender/rebounder late in the game? That said, Mooney’s probably ahead of the other bench guys which says more about them than him.
– Gibbs was really bad last night. I remember a few of those kamikaze drives last season where he’d fling something up at the rim hoping for a foul, but they seemed to happen all the time last night and against Sparty. He had a couple drives to nowhere that ended in turnovers, too. He also struggled guarding Parsons, and Rex got shifted onto him down the stretch. He’s actually played the most minutes of anyone on the team which is a huge jump from last year, so that might be where some of the problems are coming.
– I mostly agree with the bottom three points. Farrell had a really low usage rate last night, 14.6% which was well under his season average of 24%. He got it going down the stretch, but it’d have been nice to see him be more aggressive earlier in the game.
Great responses both – I feel like I didn’t see much of Harvey; I turned it on with about 17 mins to go, so maybe that’s why? Not great to hear it doesn’t look like he’ll be part of the solution.
As much as I snarked on him above, I’m afraid we’re going to miss Matt Ryan more than we anticipated, even if the obviously apparent issues yesterday were size and defense – it really does seem like we need another rotation player.
We need a shooter so badly. This team isn’t going to out-muscle and out-rebound people. If Harvey isn’t going to be able to score as the 6th man, it sure would have been nice to have Ryan there ready to score as the 7th man.