Just when it looked like this season was going to slip away from Notre Dame, it certainly seems like the Irish are back. They capped off the great week with a comfortable win Saturday night over Florida State, 84-72.
The Irish had lost 5 of their last 7 entering Saturday, but they started to look like themselves again in their win over Wake Forest in their previous outing. A double-digit win over a top-15 opponent should have Irish fans feeling even better.
Notre Dame is now a solid 8-5 and tied with Syracuse for 6th place in the ACC. The schedule sets up nicely for them to get back into that double-bye spot in the next couple of weeks. More on that momentarily.
Let’s get into it:
Bonzie’s All-American Case
I’ve been campaigning all season for Bonzie Colson as an all-ACC 1st teamer. That seems like a fairly likely proposition at this point, as Colson leads the conference in rebounding and is one of its top and most efficient scorers as well.
But Bonzie took on a different profile this week. He was named a finalist for the Wooden and Naismath Awards for national player of the year. He met those announcements on Saturday night with a career-high 33 points and 13 rebounds.
This is on the short list of best games he’s ever played. Bonzie was 12 for 18 from the field and 8 for 8 from the line. He absolutely took over during the key stretch in the 2nd half in which the Irish seized control of the game. FSU’s cadre of frontline players just had no answer for Colson. And did you know he’s only 6’5″??? That wingspan, though…
He is probably a long-shot for 1st team status, but Colson seems like a pretty safe bet to land on one of the All-American teams by season’s end. He also surpassed 1,000 career points in this one. My goodness, where’s he going to end up once his career is done in South Bend?
2nd career 30 pt game ✅
61st ND player over 1,000 pts ✅
Momentum swinging tip in ✅
All on ONE PLAY.
pic.twitter.com/5EYsXblAnv— Notre Dame MBB (@NDmbb) February 12, 2017
Vasturia Joins #DunksDuLac
After a rough couple week stretch while the Irish were struggling, Steve Vasturia was starting to look like he did last March. He struggled mightily from the field, seemed to have no lift on his shot, and even was a step behind his usual standard on defense.
He has responded with two strong games back-to-back, including a 15-point, 7-rebound effort on Saturday night. Vasturia was 6 for 6 inside the arc, seemingly able to get to the rim at will. His 0 for 4 from the behind the arc is still an area of concern, but overall he looks a lot better than he did just a few games ago.
But most importantly, he dunked. For the first time in his Irish career, Steve Vasturia threw one down in a perfect cap to the night.
Saw two things I rarely see at @ndmbb games: Tailgaters, and a Steve Vasturia dunk: pic.twitter.com/S3zDyYAXv8
— Matt Cashore (@mattcashore) February 12, 2017
 Tinkering the Starting Lineup…Again
For the fourth straight game, Mike Brey rotated in a new starter in that 5th spot in the starting lineup. Despite Tuesday night’s win, Brey decided to replace Rex Pflueger with TJ Gibbs, who made his first career start. The freshman point guard allowed Matt Farrell to have a bit more help handling the ball and initiating the offense.
In that sense, the move appeared to work. Farrell was very fresh and commanded the pick and roll offense nearly to perfection. If Brey gets a 15-point, 9-assist effort from his point guard, he’s got to feel like there’s a pretty good chance that’s a win.
For his part, Gibbs struggled from the floor (0-4) but scored on 5 FTs and added 2 assists and 4 boards in just over 20 minutes of work. Gibbs does seem to play better on the road, though. He may be getting a little too jacked up by the home crowd or something.
At the end of the day, Pflueger still had a few more minutes than Gibbs, so there is not really a substantial difference between starting one or the other. Hopefully, Brey sticks with this lineup because it is important for his guys to find their groove with this new normal.
Out-Rebounding Florida State?
Despite committing to the smaller lineup, Notre Dame was able to out-rebound FSU, 41-34. Even if you discount some of that because of the Seminoles’ abysmal FT shooting, to even neutralize that despite the size disparity between the two teams is a major victory for the Irish.
Florida State only pulled down 20% of their misses after a series of games in which the Irish gave up 30+% these last few weeks. The entire team committed to the boards to make it happen, obviously led by Colson, but also getting at least 4 from each of the other starters.
Neutralizing the defensive boards helped Notre Dame to a defensive efficiency of 95. FSU certainly helped out the cause by missing 15 FTs. Still, the Irish are now sitting at a 98 adjusted defensive efficiency according to Pomeroy, good for 61st in the country. That is nearly 5 points per 100 possessions (and 100 spots in the rankings) better than last year’s team finished. It’s not exactly spectacular, but it is one of the best under Brey and gives this team quite a bit more balance than in years’ past.
Moving Forward
This was a huge win. Notre Dame was short on big resume-building wins, but this certainly fits the bill. The Irish are now solidly in contention for one of those top 4 seeds that were announced today, especially when you look at what’s in front of them.
The Irish are on the road all next week, but they will be taking on Boston College and NC State. BC last won exactly a month ago, losing 9 straight since. NC State keeps getting blown out ever since their big win at Duke (5 straight losses) and face in-state rival UNC just three days before they host the Irish. Two road games await, but they couldn’t be more favorable road games.
Then, the Irish get to host Georgia Tech and Boston College the following week. You hate to get ahead of yourself, but goodness that schedule sets up for a 6-game winning streak entering their regular season finale in Louisville.
It’s pretty easy to imagine the Irish finding their way to 12-6 (KenPom thinks so). That would almost certainly be in contention for a double-bye, although there aren’t a lot of tiebreaking scenarios that are favorable for the Irish. If Mike Brey manages to lead his team to a third straight double-bye for the ACC Tournament, start building the statue now.
Hope you and your special someone are looking forward to spending your Valentine’s Day evening getting cozy and watching the Irish take on Boston College in Chestnut Hill (7pm, ESPNU).
Kudos to the team, but the rebounding numbers were helped out considerably with FSU’s free throw shooting.
Great game, although Farrell really had some bizarre sequences to end the game. I really thought he was going to dribble himself into a backcourt violation with 13 seconds left. That would have made 3 or 4 straight turnovers for him.
Hopefully the team doesn’t overlook the next few opponents. The loss to G Tech was bad enough; we can’t get complacent.
Absolutely love Gibbs getting major minutes. It helps Farrell play at his best the same way that Farrell playing major minutes helped DJ play his best last March. Brey certainly sees also how great of a rhythm we get into when we play 4 around 1. With how many drives to an open lane we got today, I’d be okay with never going 2 bigs again the rest of the season. What a great win, now we just can’t get complacent.
I find it interesting that as most of the rest of the basketball world is moving to 2 PG quality ball handlers on the court more and more, Brey is moving to 3. Seems to make a lot of sense to operate this offense and given how much he piles on minutes for his main guys.
We’re going to lose all tiebreakers unless we beat Louisville to end the season. If we can pull that off, those two wins will be the gift that keeps on giving since it might launch us to a very high seed. If we can win the next 4 (like you said, getting ahead of ourselves, but not unimaginable), we’ll potentially enter that last game with a shot at the 1 or 2 seed if we win and falling all the way to the 6 if we lose. Let’s get there first, but that could be some high stakes ball…
A thing we’ve discussed a bit in private: Bonzie Colson just notched his 75th career win. If you assume we can notch a few more down the stretch here, plus a couple in March (ACC or NCAA tournament), he’ll manage to hit 100 wins sometime during the middle of the conference schedule next year. What a turnaround for a program that felt left for dead a few years back.
Is there a chance he pokes around on his draft stock and we don’t get the Bonz back next year?
I think there’s nearly a 0% chance he leaves. Odds are slim he gets drafted, so why pass up a year of free education at a place he seems to love? Maybe he does like VJ and puts his name in for consideration, but at his size, there’s not really a position for him in the NBA. We’ve seen his struggles against big guys. I think he could find a role in Europe and maybe, eventually, somebody gives him a shot in the NBA. But I think next year he comes back to work on:
1) his defense (although I’m not sure at his size there’s much more he can do here, other than working on his strength)
2) his jump shot (or rather, putting up more volume from the outside, to show pro scouts he can extend defenses)
3) his passing (once he gets the ball in the post, he’s shooting it basically every time. For us, that’s great because he’s so good at it, but against pro competition, you’re going to need to be able to kick it out more often, especially against double teams. Also, if he improves on that shooting volume and spends more time around the free throw line, he can show off any passing skills he might have from the high post)
You could argue that this year’s team doesn’t really have a go to player, and that our attack is very balanced, especially with Steve and VJ able to go off at any time. Next year, Bonzie is “the man.” While I just don’t see him getting drafted because of his unconventional game, who knows what happens if he averages 20 & 12 (a very achievable goal) next year while improving his defense a bit (and maybe improving his Assist/Turnover ratio a little bit).
Bunny Colvin seems unhappy
Kinda interesting that, if Gibbs sticks as the 5th starter, this would be the second straight year that Brey has abandoned the 2-bigs starting lineup for a 2-point guard lineup. It certainly looked promising last night.
Watching Farrell and Bonzie carve up the FSU defense was just a thing of beauty last night. It seemed like Farrell was toying with the Noles defense and setting up easy Bonzie looks at will. If we can look that dangerous offensively a month from now, we could be in for another fun ride. Gotta take care of business the next couple of weeks.
Thanks for the write up. Impressive win, we can’t afford a letdown the next 2 road games.
If there is anyone old enough to remember, Bonzie’s game reminds me more and more of Adrian Dantley. Definitely not as prolific a scorer, but a better rebounder. He has the same uncanny knack of getting his shot off in a crowd without it being blocked.
Well, that certainly was peak Bonzie. What an amazing performance. What struck me is what a workhorse the guy is. He gets bounced around and knocked to the ground a lot, but still bounces up and plays with amazing energy. The dude is a warrior. From a numbers perspective, this was a pretty interesting win. ND’s 2 games against FSU have been the quickest tempo games of the season, and by a good margin, the quickest conference games ND has played. ND’s 110 offensive efficiency is the 4th best performance against the FSU defense this year, but even more impressive is holding them to 95, as is pointed out in the article. That’s FSU’s 2nd worst offensive performance. Their worst was an abysmal 76 in Atlanta. FSU went 99.4 in their win over Virginia, and ND was better at 95. Awesome. Four factors pretty much tell the story, as they often do in lopsided games. The Irish shot well at 55% eFG and held FSU under 50. Turnover percentages weren’t great with ND at 17% and FSU at 12%. It would be great to see that number trend down, but Brey admitted in his presser that with more probing and driving, there are going to be a few more TO’s we might have to live with. As was noted, the rebounding margin was heavily influenced by FSU’s dreadful FT shooting. However, ND had the edge in OREB%, gathering 22% of their misses vs 21% for FSU. The Irish had a slightly better FTRate at 36% to 33%, but the Irish cashed in on 90% of their FTA’s vs. 32% for FSU. It would have been a nice win with just the shooting advantage, but the FT’s made it a pretty comfortable evening. There’s a small part of me that hates being “that guy,” but I will point out the one black mark on this performance. WTF was up with the last possessions before halftime. Like a lot of people I feared a run and wanted to see the Irish close the half well. Bonzie had a foul and we didn’t want to see him hit with a late 2nd. I figured Brey would use his “use-it-or-lose-it” first half timeout somewhere right between the under 4 and halftime. Instead, he saved it until there were about 55 seconds left in the half. What ensued was a comedy of errors. Coming out of that TO, we couldn’t make anything happen and Vasturia burns another TO to save the possession, and basically kill a textbook 2-for-1 end-of-half situation. What was worse was that after the second TO, ND still couldn’t get a decent look, relying on Farrell playing hero ball off of a switch that actually favored the FSU defender. Margins get extremely thin when March comes rolling around. It would be nice to see Brey and his guys be a little more clinical about closing out halves. That’s picking nits thought. The supermodel has a small pimple. This was still a gorgeous… Read more »