A few days after knocking off Syracuse for the first time in ACC play, the Notre Dame hoops team had aspirations of finally shaking the Virginia monkey off their back. Unfortunately, the Irish came out with their most sluggish performance of the season, falling by an unflattering scoreline of 71-54.
The contest was tense and rather ugly from the start, which played right into Virginia’s game plan of frustration. The Irish seemed immediately phased by the Cavs’ pack line defense, as they mostly swung the ball around the perimeter early rather than trying to drive through the famously impenetrable Tony Bennett defense. Despite not being able to run through their usual sets, the Irish were able to find a decent number of open looks from deep. They simply picked a horrible night to lose their 3-point stroke. Halfway through the first half, the Irish found themselves with a measly 8 points.
On a positive note, the Irish defense was able to feed off the energy from a raucous Purcell Pavilion crowd early, keeping the margin very manageable despite an anemic offensive output throughout the first half. A very deep Steve Vasturia 3 seemed to energize the offense, and then Bonzie Colson went to work. Colson was at his best in the latter half of the first half, creating contact, displaying incredible touch at the rim, and hitting 10-foot jumpers with ease.
The Irish went into halftime down just one point, which felt pretty fortunate considering their uncharacteristic struggles shooting. If they could go on any kind of mini-run to get the crowd going, the game still felt winnable.
It was not to be. Virginia continued to wind the clock in the second half, and London Perrantes made countless gut-punch plays to keep the Irish at arm’s length. The Irish simply couldn’t get any of their scorers going in the second half. V.J. Beachem continued his Jekyll/Hyde act, going 1-10 from the field and 0-5 from deep. Matt Farrell only managed 8 points, his lowest total in an ACC game. Even Bonzie cooled off, oddly going only 4-7 from the charity stripe.
A Virginia offensive rebound leading to a London Perrantes dagger 3 gave the Cavaliers a 62-51 lead going into the under-4 timeout, and that 11-point lead may as well have been 100 with the way the Irish were stymied on both ends of the floor. John Mooney and Elijah Burns ended up getting a couple minutes of time with the result all sewed up for Virginia.
OFFENSIVE STRUGGLES
The Irish have suffered some tough losses this year, but this one was unique in its frustrating nature. The Irish were extremely impressive in their ability to take double-digit leads against Villanova and Purdue. They hung right with ACC leaders Florida State in a difficult environment. In this one, however, the Irish really didn’t seem to bring anything close to their A-game. With the crowd just begging for the Irish to hit consecutive threes and apply some pressure, the Irish couldn’t find any of their usual offensive swagger.
While this loss will do nothing to dispel the narrative that Tony Bennett has Mike Brey’s number, the fact is that the Irish had enough good looks to win this game. In their home gym, the Irish shooters somehow managed to reverse the digits from their 71% performance at FSU, going only 17% from deep tonight. The nation’s best free throw shooting team also shot just 65% from the line.
Virginia’s ability to clog up the Irish passing lanes bothered them all night. The Cavaliers were deflecting balls out of play if not outright stealing them, causing the Irish to finish the game with a horrible 9:10 assist to turnover ratio.
Finally, the Irish were crushed on the boards, managing just 2 offensive boards in comparison to Virginia’s 10. This lack of second chance opportunities allowed Virginia to control the pace of the game even further, really putting the pressure on a misfiring Irish offense to make shots, as they would only get one per possession.
MOVING FORWARD
There’s no getting around it; this was a tough one for the Irish’s morale. Rather than creating a 2-game chasm between the top-3 and the rest of the ACC, this result mucks up the standings and harms the Irish’s early chances at a third consecutive double bye in the ACC Tournament.
If there’s any way to positively spin this one, the Irish have to believe that they won’t shoot this poorly again, especially on their own floor. However, this will go down as a great missed opportunity to knock off a team that the Irish can’t seem to figure out.
The Irish have a crucial 3-game stretch coming up, as they travel southeast again to face a surprisingly competitive Georgia Tech squad before facing Duke and UNC next week. A victory in Atlanta would be very big as the Irish seek to regain momentum before they attempt to continue their dominance over the Blue Devils.
As a final note, I would be perfectly content if this is the last game London Perrantes ever plays against the Irish. Just like how Trevor Cooney seemingly always hit back-breaking shots to crush Notre Dame’s spirit, Perrantes is always at his best against the Irish. Despite averaging less than 12 PPG heading into Tuesday’s contest, Perrantes seemed to score at will, hitting threes from as deep as the shamrock after milking the clock. His graduation can’t come soon enough.
Nice article, but your comments on Perrantes being an ND killer for all 4 years is Trump like.
FGM/FGA, 3PTM/3PTA, Points
Jr- 1/5, 1/3, 3
Soph- 2/8, 1/3, 5
Frosh- 1/4, 1/2, 4
Have to believe his numbers his first 3 years were the worst versus any team he has faced in the ACC.
That’s fair, I did not look at his career stats against Notre Dame before posting. Now that I check, you left out that he also went 2/2, 1/1, scoring 5 in our game at UVA when he was a freshman.
Regardless of his lack of scoring against us in his career, I have always felt that he was incredibly poised against us since his freshman year. He was mostly setting up their Justin Andersons and Malcolm Brogdons, and he had 16 assists to only 2 career TOs against us heading into tonight. Their domination of us heading into tonight must have skewed my perception of his shot-making a bit.
No doubt he is solid player, but as noted he had more points versus ND tonight than he did in his first 4 games.
Your “skewed perception” comment is spot on- but a bit is an understatement!
I have seen him make some big shots in his career in close games.
The guy who came up big tonight was Ty Jerome.
He was averaging 2.1 ppg and had 8 big points in the second half.
He was a HS team mate of Ryan’s (and higher rated as a consensus 4 star).
I admire your ability to recap this one. Had it been me, it would have been a couple hundred curse words randomly thrown together.
I’m going to posit that Virginia’s defense didn’t get us entirely out of our usual stuff. You could hear Brey calling for “wheel” frequently in the first half, and the Irish got decent motion going off that base set. They also managed to enter the ball in the post a couple of times early.
The unique thing Virginia did was to stay home on post touches and drives. They picked off and deflected a lot of passes on kick-outs from penetration or from a big on the block. Our bread and butter is that kick out 3 and Virginia’s “on the line, up the line” principles stayed in tact as the Irish moved the ball. Against most teams, you can “deform” the defense with a little penetration or a good post entry pass. Once that happens, ND’s ball movement slices you apart. Against Virginia, they do an amazing job providing just enough help while maintaining position between their own man and the ball. That makes kicking out so much more difficult and aids in their ability to help and recover with ease. Geben and Bonz each had TO’s trying to kick it out, and Farrell had at least one stolen.
Despite all of that, the Irish got clean looks. That’s what gives this one it’s kick-in-the-nuts feeling. If we shoot 40% from deep in the first half, we go in the locker room up 5. The shots were there. The Irish just missed them. I think this loss had very little to do with how we deal with the pack line or who had more recruiting stars. This was a simple case of letting something get in your head. We thought Brey was wise to play the “climb the mountain” card, positioning UVa as a yet-to-be-conquered beast. It made for an easy talking point and most media people climbed on board too.
In retrospect, that looked like a team who paid an inferior opponent too much respect. They were too careful. They steered every shot. They looked both dead-legged and like their heads were spinning. The only guy out there who seemed to handle it perfectly was Vasturia, and Onions is ELITE mental toughness. Hindsight is 20/20. In retrospect, Brey might have been better off just reinforcing that his team was the one ahead in the standings and this was just another step on their ascension to the top. Make Virgina a stop on the trek, not the mountain itself.
That’s the mental challenge facing this group right now. How do you ensure that a missed opportunity Tuesday doesn’t crumble into a 4 game slide. Need to dust yourself off, put on your road dawg pants, and battle for a tough win in Atlanta Saturday.
Yeah, I really wouldn’t have changed much as far as the offensive gameplan. If Beachem is going to miss 3 uncontested 3s in the first few minutes, it’s going to be tough to score.
The one thing I don’t understand is why we went to the zone for any extended time on defense. Half of their offensive rebounds must have come during the 10 minutes we played zone. They got wide open looks too. I felt our man was doing fine; it kept us within 1 or 2 possessions for most of the game. But the zone was horrible, and the offensive boards were absolutely demoralizing. I can’t understand why Brey stuck with it as long as he did.
Once again you and I are in complete agreement.
The zone was the easiest way to lose Perrentes and we couldn’t rebound for crap against it. If you’re Bennett and you see us play zone, you put Salt in the game and tell him to go hard to the glass. To give up 33% OREB is garbage, and part of how we let them get to 112.9 OE on the night.
Good lord, that has to have been Beachem’s worst game in an ND uniform. He had a pair of nice blocks and that and-one, but he was atrocious besides that. Couldn’t hit those early threes, then started forcing shots; didn’t get back on defense or box out; and had every rebound and loose ball ripped away from him. I was really hoping he’d put some muscle on in the offseason, but he’s still getting shoved around in the paint.
He didn’t play well, but he didn’t get much help either. Outside of Onions and Bonzie’s first half, the struggle was all over the roster.
It did not help that Rex banged 2 lay-ups off the back board in what you would see in a middle school game.
I expect more from a D1 college player.
Yeah, I found his inability to come up with loose balls the most frustrating thing, as it seems so easy for opponents to strip him at times. He did force some bad shots to try to get his offense going, but we didn’t have much else going. He remains hit or miss, we might just have to hope that he can hit in March like he did last year.
Ugh, the loose balls were the worst part. They all seemed to hit him right in the hands, but he couldn’t corral them.
Brey even talked about that in the postgame. Said that when you see 2-3 go the other way and have one bounce around off a guys face lead to one pass and a dunk – you just start to realize it isn’t your night.
Although, to be fair, we recovered 1 or 2 missed UVA dunks, we scored a basket on a ball that deflected wildly off somebody’s foot, and we got points in semi-transition on what should have been a shot clock violation. I understand the “just not our night” mentality, but really, we just got our butts kicked. We may have missed some breaks, but some weird ones definitely went our way.
I’m too disgusted to weigh in. Saturday can’t come soon enough.
Saturday against a GT team that crushed FSU at home.
I’m scared about our rebounding versus FSU – it was one of the major factors in the loss against UVA. Even in the first half, when the game was close, UVA’s extra attempts on the basket stressed our defense and offense. It will be tough to win with a similar rebounding performance against a stout home opponent in GT. Need Geben and Colson to step up on the boards.
Lol Florida State just got wrecked at Georgia Tech. This conference is dumb and awful and any team who makes it through with less than 5 losses should just be national champs.
I am vexed that we can shoot that poorly at home. I am worried about VJ and his roller coaster shooting. His form looks so pure and effortless, I don’t understand his inconsistency.