It’s no secret that the Notre Dame hoops team has been taking its lumps lately. Four consecutive losses took the Irish from a team with a top-15 ranking nationally to a team unsure if they could finish above .500 in the ACC. This drastic downturn left Tuesday’s home game against Wake Forest, perhaps an inconspicuous-looking matchup a few weeks ago, seeming like an absolutely crucial one for the Irish. Lose, and we would be relegated to bubble discussions. Win, and we could hope to get this once-promising season back on track.
The game got off to an oddly slow start considering it was a matchup of two top-20 teams in terms of offensive efficiency. The Irish particularly seemed to lack the requisite energy to turn around their losing ways. Mike Brey was unhappy at the ACC’s lack of accommodation in rescheduling this game to Wednesday, and the amount of front-rimmed 3’s the Irish missed early made it look like his concerns were valid. Wake Forest was able to feed the fantastic John Collins early, and he exploited his considerable height advantage over Bonzie Colson to give Wake a lead throughout much of the first half.
The game felt particularly foreboding with the way the first half ended. The Irish lost out on some key loose balls, a recurring frustration in the past couple of weeks, preventing them from truly making a run. Wake’s Bryant Crawford hit a tough contested 3 to end the half with the Demon Deacons up 5.
The second half started out with much of the same, with the Irish failing to score for the first 3:44. However, everything started to turn around largely due to the efforts of one man—Bonzie Colson. In consecutive possessions, the Bonz made a lay-up, successfully contested a Collins attempt on the other end, and then hit a corner 3 to give the Irish their first lead of the half. As Bonzie screamed and high-fived the fans in the front row, the Irish finally seemed to have some of their swagger back.
Of course, Wake Forest wouldn’t go away without a fight. A kick-out from John Collins to Bryant Crawford for a corner 3 tied the game up with 9 minutes left, tightening things up again. After the Irish pushed the lead back up to 8, Matt Farrell fouled Mitchell Wilbekin on a 3-point attempt. 3 free throws and an Austin Arians deep ball pulled Wake to within 2 again.
The Irish were able to counter with a Matt Farrell baseline jumper followed by a Steve Vasturia 3. Wake fouled Bonzie Colson on a rebound, sending him to the line after the under-4 timeout with 1:45 left on the clock. From there, Wake Forest went into desperation mode, and the Irish did their business from the free throw line, eventually icing it at 88-81.
LINEUP CHANGE
For the second consecutive game, Mike Brey tinkered with his starting lineup. With Martinas Geben and Austin Torres not offering much as the token starting 5s, Brey opted to go small right from the start, giving Rex Pflueger his first start of the season. Torres and Geben ended up getting a mere 6 minutes combined, signaling Brey’s increased leaning towards living and dying by his small-ball lineup.
Pflueger responded quite well to his promotion, coming up with 3 blocks, 2 steals, and some much-needed effort defending the post and scrapping for rebounds. While he didn’t offer a lot offensively, his willingness to dive to the floor and go all out attempting to grab every loose ball was sorely needed by the Irish.
Despite some murmurs of a possible John Mooney unleashing last week, he amassed another DNP. Matt Ryan recorded a 3 trillion, and while his time on the court was brief, the Irish continued their struggles with Ryan out there. While we know Brey doesn’t like to go too deep into his bench, he is also not afraid to tinker with his rotation late in the season. With Geben and Torres’s roles diminishing by the game, the back end of the rotation remains a situation to keep an eye on.
STANDOUT PERFORMANCES
This was a big one for the Irish’s “Big 4,” with each of the group putting up at least 16 points.
It all started with Bonzie Colson, who had probably his best game of the season. Starting at the 5, he had his hands full trying to guard John Collins in the post. Collins was able to be his usual effective self, but Bonzie was able to outdo him offensively. Colson flashed his wide array of post moves to get 7 buckets in the paint. One of the biggest moments in the game came in the second half. Bonzie missed a pair of free throws, a usual strength of his game that he has been struggling with a bit. On the next possession, he stepped confidently into a 3 from the top of the key and knocked it down. His fight and consistency on the offensive end was instrumental to this win.
VJ Beachem continued his resurgence shooting the ball, knocking down 5 of 12 from deep en route to 19 points. As great as the points are, I was even happier with the fact that he got 12 quality attempts off. Gibbs and Farrell were able to find a handful of wide-open catch-and-shoot 3’s for VJ. He also was able to face up some defenders and shoot over them. Throw in the 4 blocks, and it was a nice day for Beachem.
Matt Farrell had some uncharacteristic lapses at times, including some bad turnovers and a particularly egregious foul in the first half when Wake was in the bonus. However, he was able to turn it around in the second and turn in a solid overall performance. His pull-up 3 with 1:14 left was a dagger, despite being a tough look.
Finally, welcome back Steve Vasturia! Three straight single-digit performances had everyone worried what was ailing the Irish ironman, and he was able to put that stretch behind him tonight. He shot 3-5 from deep, which is particularly crucial as his jumper had been looking extremely flat over the last couple of weeks. Hopefully his 17 and 7 tonight will get him going for the season’s homestretch, and the last three games will be a minor blip on Steve’s fantastic career.
FINAL TAKEAWAYS
This was a big one for the Irish. The second half of the UNC game was an encouraging performance, but the Irish were in need of actual victories rather than their moral counterparts. This wasn’t the most confidence-inspiring victory, but it showed a few key things. Foremost, the Irish have a damn high offensive ceiling. Shooting 13-27 from deep while having Bonzie go to work down low is a good recipe for success.
Secondly, the Irish were able to withstand a rebounding deficit and win anyway. This has been a fairly common story for Notre Dame in the past few years, but Brey will likely be quite happy with his smaller lineup’s ability to absorb this margin and just out-offense the opponent. John Collins grabbed 9 offensive boards, but not many were the backbreaking variety that UNC grabbed continuously. If the Irish can continue to rebound as a team at least decently, Brey will continue to be able to give Gibbs and Pflueger more minutes.
The Irish have an opportunity to grab a huge win on Saturday, as they’ll attempt to get some revenge on a Florida State team that edged them out in Tallahassee. The ‘Noles have had some odd results of late, getting blown out at Georgia Tech a couple of weeks ago, and crushing Clemson by almost 50 on Sunday. All three of their ACC losses have come on the road, so the Irish will hope to harness some Purcell Pavilion magic and get a big-time résumé win this weekend.
Great game. Hopefully we can build on it this weekend.
Brey’s presser is a treasure trove of stuff. I think I’ll do a CTTCs on that alone.
Great recap Paddy. This wasn’t pretty, but it was cathartic, and could be the template for how we win some big ones down the stretch run. I hate giving teams nearly 40% of their misses back on the glass, but shooting 60% eFG covers a lot of sins.
Awesome recap!
I was kinda sick to my stomach around halftime, thinking this season was pretty much over.
But that 2nd half was pretty awesome. Scored 52 points and were +12. Allowed them to shoot only 36% from the floor. That’s the team that beat down Syracuse not even three weeks ago. Two halves even close to that on Saturday will get us a win.
A couple interesting stats:
Our best lineup was the starters + Gibbs in for Rex. That lineup was a +17!!! Can’t read too much into one game’s +/- stats but I think it helps demonstrate all the little things that Gibbs does out there and how useful it is having a 3rd true offensive threat in the backcourt. Rex has a little ways to go to catch up to TJ offensively.
Bonzie was obviously great with a 27, 16, and 5. but his defensive rating was a 94 (basically, ND allowed .94 ppp when he was out there). Everyone else was well over 100. I think this matches the eye test. Wake Forest’s two big runs were the 5 or so minutes when Bonzie was on the bench, and I don’t think that was random because he played like a man down low against some much taller players. One of his best games in an Irish uniform, and that’s saying something.
Saturday is big, big, big. Move to 8-5 going into the softest part of the schedule, and suddenly we’re back in contention for a double-bye. Lose though, and suddenly the margin for error becomes really thin in terms of tournament seeding and avoiding the bubble altogether. We’re really short on quality wins and need to defend our home court better than 1-3 in conference games against ranked opponents.
Not ready to declare us “back” yet, but I can be convinced on Saturday.
Where can you find the +/- by lineup?
This site is great. Tempo-based box scores and team stats as well.
http://www.scacchoops.com/viewhdgame.asp?hSchedule=39239&bView=10
This is exactly the style of offensive play I’ve been hoping for from Bonzie. I know he’s been fantastic inside all year, but I’ve really been begging for him to work from the outside a little more too. We’ve seen him knock down jumpers before, but this season he hasn’t spent much time outside. I’m not looking for him to spend a ton of time out there; but I want to see him shoot 1-2 threes per game, plus another 2-3 from 15 feet out. If we keep extending defenses past their comfort zones, it opens up so much more for the other guys (especially Steve).
I’m really curious to see what Brey does Saturday. He can’t go with this small lineup again against FSU, can he? I think their size would absolutely destroy us. On the other hand, maybe he looks at the last time we played them, when their size destroyed us regardless of how big our lineup was. In that case, maybe he thinks about just trying to outscore them and conceding a ton of boards. We’ll see.
Again, I think the key against FSU will be to draw their bigs out of the paint when we have the ball. It felt like they blocked at least half of our shots in the paint last time. There’s no way we shoot 80% from three again, so we have to be careful with the ball. Few turnovers and few blocked shots (especially blocks/steals that lead to transition) will be huge.
I absolutely expect the exact same line-up and rotation this weekend. I’ll have a post dropping Thurs to discuss this, but he just won a game where the opponent attempted 11 more FG’s. They’re willing to get pounded a little in order to keep the offense flowing. No foreseeable reason to change that for FSU – particularly when they’ve struggled against smaller line-up’s.
The 5 out look with Bonzie at the high post or 15′ out on the catch is going to be bread and butter from this point on. I also hope we work out more of that 4/5 pick and pop with him and VJ. That could be deadly. I think you need to be ready to damn the torpedoes and see us scoring 90, but giving up nearly that because opponents are going to have double-digit extra FGA’s.
The Louisville game might have been fool’s gold. We thought they could win without raining 3’s. Looks like that might not really be the case. Only time will tell.
Re: the lineup and getting “pounded” on the glass.
It seems like an equally big problem that is getting no attention is that we are just conceding the offensive boards almost entirely. The last three games, our OREB rate is 20% or below. This seems like a philosophical problem more than a physical one, as 4-5 of our guys aren’t even trying to crash the offensive boards on most of our misses. Even Bonzie only had 2 last night.
We shouldn’t just concede this. If we can stay closer to our season average 26% (which is already not good) or be a little better than that just through sheer commitment to it, it can really cancel out some high OREB rates given up. Obviously, you don’t want everyone to crash and allow easy break outs the other way, but there’s a better balance to be struck here. And if the total possession gap goes from 11 to, say, 6 or 7, well all of a sudden it becomes a lot easier to make up for that with pure efficiency.
I want to see a greater commitment to the offensive glass! Starting Saturday!
Totally agree with this. And that’s another risk you run when you put Bonzie out on the perimeter, we have almost no shot of getting an offensive board without him.
This team is perplexing. They made a lot of shots, but I still didn’t see the kind of offensive flow and beautiful basketball from earlier this season. Wake is not a good defensive team and usually swinging it around the perimeter or a halfhearted drive in the paint led to open shots. This doesn’t cut it against better defensive teams.
Where are the backdoor cuts leading to easy layups or dump offs in the paint? They just haven’t been there as much, maybe it’s teams packing the paint more and forcing us to shoot 3s since we’ve been cold.
I suspect some of that is intentional. Rotating back early on defense (at the expense of offensive boards) is both a defensive efficiency move and a fatigue management technique. It could be a conscious decision to live and die with good shooting.
11 extra FGA’s and 48+% OREB feel a lot like a “pounding,” no?
They only got 35% of their offensive rebounds. Not sure where you’re seeing 48%.
I agree it’s a problem, but it’s only half of the overall problem despite being the only part of it that is discussed. -11 can be partially cancelled out by doing better than grabbing 17% of our own misses. That’s terrible. We need to do better, and it’s not any less important than grabbing defensive boards.
I was struck in the last two games especially by how many goofy bounces off bad shots landed in the hands of our opponents for offensive rebounds. I kept whining about bad luck, but hell, UNC and WF made their own luck by crashing the boards. We’ll never get those lucky bounces if we don’t even try.
There’s no reason why some of our perimeter guys (including and especially VJ) can’t attack the boards once it becomes obvious that someone else is about to shoot. It’s really freaking hard to box out a rebounder sprinting from the three-point arc as it is. We might find it to be more effective, despite our lack of size, than we otherwise might think.
UNC had 48.6% OREB.
Totally agree that we seem to be under-indexing on 50% of bounces and loose balls going our way. I worry that a concerted effort to hit the offensive glass could lead to more run-outs. Knowing Brey, he’d rather get 1 great shot and get back than crash hard. I’m not saying he’s right, but it fits his pattern.
I for one welcome the return of Good Beachem