While still basking in the glow of a January 1st bowl game victory, Irish fans were dealt a heavy blow Tuesday. The Fighting Irish basketball program announced senior All-Everything Bonzie Colson suffered a broken foot in practice. The timeline for Colson’s return was set at 8 weeks following surgery on Thursday, January 4th.
Senior All-American Bonzie Colson to miss eight weeks after suffering a left foot fracture in practice this week.
Quote from @NDMikeBrey below… pic.twitter.com/cUtKfEjWQA
— Notre Dame MBB (@NDmbb) January 2, 2018
Let’s start with the only good news to come out of all of this: Bonzie is going to recover to 100% of his strength and speed after this. Unlike a knee or other ligament injuries, the recovery here is complete. The program is committed to not rushing Bonzie back. That’s important news for Colson and his family.
The eight weeks it is going to take to be game-ready, however, is devastating to the Irish basketball program. Eight weeks from the surgery is March 1st. If that’s the case, Bonzie will play in ND’s first and last ACC regular season contests.
Without Colson, the Irish won’t be favored in any of their upcoming ACC contests, with the possible exception of hosting Pitt February 28th. The Irish tumble from pre-season ACC title contender without their ACC PoY front-runner. That being said, I checked the ACC by-laws, and we’re not allowed to simply fold up shop and go home. Let’s look at what’s ahead for Mike Brey’s squad and the coach’s quest for the ND wins record.
Before we do, let’s step back and look at historical precedence for this. In Luke Harangody’s senior season, he was sidelined 5 games. The team managed to burn its way to 6 wins in 7 games with Harangody out or coming off the bench. Tory Jackson, Tim Abromitis, Tyrone Nash, Ben Hansbrough and Carelton Scott managed to drag that team in to the 2010 NCAA Tournament.
The other, probably more apt, comparison is 2013-14. Notre Dame was playing decent basketball heading in to their inaugural ACC season. Only 2 weeks before tipping off against Duke, the Irish suffered a heartbreaking loss to OSU, followed by the more heartbreaking loss of Jerian Grant for the season. Grant’s “academic misstep” cost him the entire ACC season, and the team never recovered.
You can take things from either of these events and start to construct a picture of what Notre Dame’s future might look like. The 2010 team struggled before the Harangody injury. Luke himself wasn’t the same guy from his junior season. When he went down, Brey felt the remaining guys were best suited to slow things down and use the entire shot clock. The remaining Irish weren’t quite athletic enough to compete toe-to-toe, so Brey limited possessions and put in an offense people still talk about 8 years later. That 2010 team banded together and played with great spirit. It was fun to watch them pull off the upsets without their consensus “best player.”
There’s no reason to sugar coat the 2014 season. Save a wonderful beat-down of Duke to open conference play, it stunk. Notre Dame managed 6 wins in a very down ACC. Offensively, the team fell short of historic efficiency numbers. Of course, they were also historically bad on the defensive end. The silver lining to that depression is that it forced future leaders Steve Vasturia and Demetrius Jackson onto the floor. Playing expanded roles as freshman set them up to be key contributors for the best season in modern Irish basketball.
Last night, @NDMikeBrey talked with @TheAndyKatz re: Colson’s injuryhttps://t.co/C66BpfQMAH
— Alan Wasielewski (@NDmbbSID) January 3, 2018
So what does 2018 hold for Fighting Irish basketball while their best player sits as a spectator?
First, it immediately becomes Matt Farrell’s team. As the senior leader with the ball in his hands, there are no longer any questions about who is the alpha dog for the Irish. Mike Brey is going ride-or-die with the Jersey swag.
From a style-of-play perspective, I think you have to sell your soul to 5-out pick-and-roll basketball. If you learned anything from 2014, throwing it down on the block isn’t the solution. The Irish need to open up the floor and let Farrell and TJ Gibbs work off of Martinas Geben ball screens. While Geben isn’t the athlete that Zach Auguste was, he’s been finishing and moving well. He can only go about 25 minutes per night, but perhaps he can stretch that to a full 30.
When Geben isn’t in the game, I think you have to give Elijah Burns a very long look. When Auguste was suspended for a single game in 2015, it was Bonzie Colson who seized the moment with tough defense, rebounding, and a black eye in Atlanta. Burns now has his chance at a similar break-through for this team. Let’s hope the young man seizes it. If he can focus on being a great screener and relentless rebounder, he could make a big contribution.
The other style-of-play consideration is tempo. It is so tempting to reach back into the 2010 bag of tricks and pull out the burn. I hope Mike Brey and the staff resist with all their might. Notre Dame’s best player now is Matt Farrell. Farrell, Rex Pflueger, and TJ Gibbs are all suited for a much more open floor game than the burn. The Irish back-court is considerably better in transition than against a set defense. With bodies like Harvey, Diogo, and Torres available to give athletic minutes off the bench, I think the Irish should look to run, run, run. That doesn’t mean you force a bad shot in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock. In fact, if you don’t get that good look in transition, you should be patient. I just pray they see that walking it up the floor is not the answer.
It is easy to focus on Colson’s 21.4 ppg sitting on the sideline, but his 10.4 rebounds per contest is also a massive concern. Geben has to go from 6.4 to 10 – that’s obvious. Whoever replaces Bonzie’s minutes, most likely John Mooney to start, will have to add another four boards a night to their contribution.
A big factor in the rebounding concerns is defensive style of play. Brey was already pushing the idea of using zone to rest key guys and keep them in the game without wearing them out on the defensive end. One has to imagine that continues with this group. The Irish face a very zone-able opponent in North Carolina State on Wednesday evening. The Wolfpack don’t shoot a lot of 3s, but they attack the offensive glass like crazy. Kevin Keatts’ squad doesn’t shoot it all that well, but they collect 37% of their misses, good for 13th in the country. If you want to test ND’s defensive rebounding, this is the team to do it.
Emotionally, this has to be a big blow to a team that was already suffering some pretty big up’s and downs. From the shirtless lei celebration in Maui to the game situation comedy-of-errors in Indy, this team has been consistently inconsistent. Any time you need to print a slogan t-shirt to wear, you know you have some issues. The biggest question for this team is whether they band together a’la 2010 or fall apart a’la 2014. The pressure and burden of expectations went flying out the window Tuesday. Can they cobble together enough wins to get to .500 on the ACC Fury Road? Can they construct a style of play that works with who’s left? Who is (are) the guy(s) who steps up and finds a new way to contribute? Will Brey invest in youth and throw younger guys like Harvey and Diogo big minutes in anticipation of a big run down the road?
All of this remains to be seen. As an Irish basketball fan, I’m devastated. This year held a lot of promise. There was a very high ceiling for this team. Yet, there was also a pretty low floor, even with Colson in the lineup. With expectations now obliterated, we get to watch this team and examine what Brey can do. The process of getting the all-time win record just became a lot more interesting. If he can somehow cobble something together to keep the Irish afloat, Brey will be in the national Coach of the Year conversation. The fan in me says this sucks. The basketball tactics/coaching nerd in me says this just got a whole lot more interesting.
Get well Bonzie.
I don’t know that we won’t be favored in 18 of 19 ACC games, but even if we are most of those lines should be pretty tight. They basically need to go 9 and 10 the rest of the way in the regular season to guarantee themselves an NCAA slot and I see 12 games that are a coin flip at worst plus the old “puncher’s chance” in the other 7.
I agree that Mooney picks up a lot of Colson’s minutes, but going 4 guard at times with Harvey picking up minutes and the pace going up should be part of the plan too. The team isn’t totally void of talent coming off the bench despite Brey’s preference to keep the bench minutes short.
Losing Colson is a reason for not competing for the ACC title, it’s an excuse for missing the tournament and not a very good one.
I actually think .500 in the league with one win in Brooklyn could be enough to scrape in, but it won’t be by much.
I’m probably over reacting, but Colson was having one of the most statistically impressive seasons in CBB history (not just ND history). Replacing a sure-fire double double on both ends is incredibly difficult. Other than Pitt, no one in the ACC is truly abysmal. Yes, there have been some horrible losses by teams like NC State, Wake, and GT. State took out Arizona, Wake nearly won in Chapel Hill, BC took out Duke, and it took Bonz putting up a HUGE night to beat GT at home.
The Irish were 28th in Pomeroy’s ratings before the injury. Bonzie was currently 2nd in his KenPom PoY rankings. You can’t remove 20/10 from that without a serious drop in efficiency on both ends. Bonz helps our shooting numbers tremendously and our defensive numbers with blocks and boards.
I think it is reasonable to take 20 spots off our KenPom rating without Bonz, and it could be 30 pretty easily. That lands us somewhere around 50th-60th. If that was our rating, we’d be slight favorites over BC and NC State at home, but probably not on the road. The model would give us the edge in Atlanta, but the eye test would be worrisome.
If Brey drags this team into the tournament without Bonzie Colson, it is easily the national CoY performance. If you’re going to hold him to an NCAA tournament bid as a standard this year, that’s an exceedingly high bar. Perhaps an NIT bid is a better “par” to shoot for without your best player.
It is really important to note that for as aspirational and inspirational as Brey’s program building has become, there is a downside to his heavy reliance on “main guys” and making seniors log heavy minutes. You’re not very deep and injury resistant. It hasn’t bit us for a while, but that run of good luck was bound to end at some point.
Another question is how would the committee look at us at the end of the season? Would we get in with a lesser record because of an injury – and with Colson back in the fold? In other words, how much is it like the new football committee where they are trying to take the best teams and so consider whether a game lost was with a major injury? Of course it’s different when its 20 games, but the fact will be that when they are making this decision Colson will be back and healthy and presumably helped ND to a few big wins at the end of the season.
Zibby is a much better bracketologist than I am, so weight his opinion more than mine.
I don’t think it counts for much. Brey was very explicit that we’re not risking his draft stock or future by rushing him back. He’s not going to be able to play 30 minutes on March 1st and go right in to that Virginia game and the ACCT without a metric crap ton of rust.
It might slightly help a bubble argument, but nothing that losses to BSU and IU won’t offset in the other direction.
I’d love to see Zibby’s thoughts, because I think .500 in ACC Regular Season, with Bonzie back for minor minutes in 1 ACC tourney victory, plus a neutral site win over a top 10 team (wichita state) would easily have ND in. A 20-win ACC team without it’s best player for the entire conference season? I’d be furious if they got left out.
Of course, I don’t see 8 more ACC wins on the schedule. Maybe 6 or 7 if things come together just right.
Yea I was assuming not rushing back meant just about when he started playing and so when he came back he’d be able to play a lot of minutes but that makes sense that not rushing back could/would mean also that he is brought back slowly with his minutes too (not just in terms when he starts playing).
I don’t think you’re over-selling how good Bonzie is, I just think you’re not giving quite enough credit to the guys who will pick up those minutes. A starting lineup of Farrell, Gibbs, Pflueger, Mooney, and Geben can match up against the NC States and Boston Colleges of the basketball world, and those are the teams we’ll need to beat to make the tourney, not @Duke and @UNC.
20 wins, a signature win over Wichita St, and coming out of the ACC puts you on the good side of the bubble like 19-15 Vanderbilt, 19-14 Michigan State, 19-12 Marquette who all were at-large teams last year.
The important thing here is that Bonz is consistently good. Outside of him, no one else on the roster has shown any sort of consistency. Given the situation we’re in, a few guys are going to get a chance. Based on very small sample sizes with guys like Mooney, Burns, Harvey, and Djogo, we could have some really good stuff there. “Could” is the operating word. I love your optimism and I hope you’re right. My worry is that we need that night in and night out, esp in the more winnable games.
If you follow the KP ratings, here’s the remaining schedule easiest to toughest…
Pitt (93%)
NC St (83)
BC (81)
at GT (73)
VT (70)
Ville (69)
———————-
at NC St (63)
FSU (61)
at BC (59)
at Wake (58)
Miami (58)
UNC (54)
———————-
at Syr (46)
at Clemson (34)
at UNC (29)
at UVa (24)
at Duke (20)
Those numbers are the KP win probability percentages. Those, of course, are not adjusted for Bonzie’s absence.
I think you have to hold serve at home against the top 6 games. That would get you to 6 wins – 7 if you can steal one in Atlanta. If you could somehow catch either FSU or Miami napping at home and come up with one of the middle tier road games, you could get to 8-9 wins. It won’t be easy, but it is out there.
They could also go 2-15 over that stretch and it wouldn’t shock me.
2-15 would make me sad, so I’m not giving that any credence right now.
If the glass is at least filled with air and not a hopeless vacuum and you hold serve against those top 6 then you only need 3 out of 11 of the games we’ll be small to large underdogs in. Someone will step up, we can do that.
The odds of winning all 6 easiest games, with Bonzie, were 22% according to KenPom. The odds of winning all 6 without him are negligible.
The odds that this team gets to 9 ACC wins are very small.
I can play that game too – The odds of losing all 11 of the hardest games (granted with Bonzie) is Zero Point Zero Seven Percent. Not 7%. Not 0.7% percent. 0.07%. Or 0.0007 if you’d prefer.
The reason that ND’s bench players don’t get much run isn’t because they’re bad people who only bounce the ball off their toes. It’s because Brey is psychologically incapable of distributing minutes to guys not in his starting lineup. To say that no one will step up enough to split with Boston College seems far less likely to me than saying this team can still compete one way or another.
That’s right, but they don’t have to lose 11 of the hardest games; they only have to lose 8 or 9. Which seems pretty likely at this point. We’ll see I suppose.
So what do you think is the bar that we’d have to meet to make it into the tournament? We’d have to assume to get a couple of good wins in the ACC tourney (because that’s our best shot with Colson back) but what would we have to do otherwise before he comes back to give a shot to make the tourney?
Edit: I didn’t see gambit’s comment when writing this.
Is it just a matter of 9 more regular season wins or does it matter who they are?
Joe, you read my mind on a game plan without Bonzie. In 2010 the shot clock was 35 seconds and that made more sense to bleed time off of it and shorten the game. The change to 30 seconds is a big difference and negates that (and I am sure the NCAA committee considered how boring this was when they shortened it).
I also believe one of the reasons Farrell walks it up so slowly particularly in the first half is not wanting to tire out your front court stud who is playing 35 mpg. Well that concern should be over now. You have 4 front court guys who move well up and down the court and you can alternate them (but please no Geben/Torres pairing) and you can play 4 around 1. ND could also play 5 out with Mooney and/or Burns.
Pushing the ball might mean playing Farrell a bit yes and having Gibbs as the PG for 7-8 minutes a game. I hope Brey can deal with that. A Bonzie less line up will struggle even more in a set offense. Try to get some early offense before the defense is set.
I realize Brey does not want to rush Bonzie, but the Pitt game is on 2/28 (one day short of exactly 8 weeks) and the Virginia game is on 3/3. If this team some how has 8 wins going into the home season finale with Pitt, it sure would be nice to have him back to play a small amount to have some game action before Virginia and the ACCT. To bring him back for the first game of the ACCT is shaking off a lot of rust. I realize they should be able to be able to beat Pitt without him. Hopefully the Pitt and Virginia games will matter in terms of building an at large case (as opposed to winning the ACCT to make the NCAAT).
MPG in a quicker pace line up
Farrell, Gibbs, Rex at 32 each
Geben 28
Mooney 18-20
Harvey 18-20
Burns 13-15
Djogo 13-15
Torres 10
I think Farrell at less than 37 is a pipe dream. I wish you were right, because TJ is the full time ball handler next year. I just don’t think it’ll happen.
What I think is more realistic is to expect Farrell to go for 37, but play some of those minutes off the ball with TJ bringing it up and initiating when we can’t run. That takes some burden off of him, but keeps the 3FG threat in the game.
If you follow what Bonzie did his freshman year, he stepped up in to a big 22 road minutes when Auguste was out. That earned him a couple of really big nights at Louisville and in the ACCT semi-final with 26 minutes each. He also had a few unremarkable < 10 minute games here and there. Someone has to find a way to replicate that and then become part of a rotating cast. The prime candidate is Burns. He can be an important glue guy and defensive rebounding machine. That's what we need right now.
I’d like to see Brey just throw Harvey in head first if we really struggle the next 3 games. I know he’s looked bad the past few games, but maybe getting the rock more often will be just what he needs to get hot.
I do wonder if Brey is going to be tempted at all to tank a few games. The past few years, we’ve had a tendency to fall behind in the first half, only to make a furious comeback in the 2nd. Will he try to give Farrell/Gibbs some rest in those types of games and just coast to a blowout loss when we’re already down big? Or will he have them in their all the way to the finish, knowing that we’re going to need every win we can scrape out?
The last time we lost our best player going in to league play, Brey went with Onions. He played as much against Canisus (an OT game), Duke and NC State as he’d played the entire non-conf schedule.
There’s part of me that wants it to be Harvey, but the importance of Bonz’s 10 boards a night leads me to think it can/should be Burns.
Harvey had waaaayyy more non-confrerence freshman minutes than Onions got, so maybe that’s a good sign. I suppose there’s a small lineup with Farrell, Gibbs, Pflueger, Harvey, and Mooney that is our best shooting crew. They’d have to turn people over because they’d concede a lot of extra shots.
We shall see.
Rex, Harvey and Mooney are all capable of competing on the boards. Mooney also seems to understand what a block out it is- something Bonzie took for granted versus IU (that resulted in two 4 point possessions).
That small lineup might be one of the best shooting lineups Brey has ever put on the court, so long as Mooney’s shot continues to fall with more volume. You could even swap Djogo in for Harvey (or Pflueger) and possibly have an even better shooting lineup. That could be fun for a few minutes per half.
Oh oh oh. Poor Bonzie, poor team. I guess we could say how fresh (and rusty?) he’ll be on March 1st…
Sorry; I did not see any of the very informed comments above before I made my inane comment to reassure Joe someone had read his analysis. I’ll go be quiet now…
Don’t apologize!
We’re officially into uncharted territory with this. It is all uninformed speculation right now.
One possible good thing about this is that teams now have no way to scout what we will do on offense based on past tendencies. We may get a few surprises in the next few games…oh, who am I kidding? I’m just hoping for the Ewing Theory to be applicable here. I do trust that Brey can figure something out, but we really have to be more consistent from long range (than we have so far) to be competitive. I really wish this had happened BEFORE we started into the ACC part of the season. That way, any experimenting Brey tries would have been less destructive to us and our tourney chances. But yeah, Burn isn’t something we can fall back on this time.
Ewing theory most certainly in play here. I don’t think it has much to do with scouting. Guys tendencies aren’t going to change. Rex wants that 14′ pull up, TJ greatly favors his right, etc etc… To me, it has more to do with role clarity and potential changes in style of play (hopefully, more up tempo because we don’t have to save Bonz’s legs). Those could create some bounce for us.
Tonight is doable. Vegas still has us -7. It is the trip to Syracuse that worries me. We haven’t looked great against competent zones and we never play great up there. If we take two tough punches out of the gate, it might be tough to steer out of the skid.
Cross your fingers.
The bright side is the next 3 games are not versus crazy talented teams in NCS, Cuse, and GT.
Losing the next 2 could start a tail spin, but at least these 3 are still winnable games as opposed to home/away Duke or at UNC or at Virginia.
While Bonzie had 22 versus GT, it took 21 shots and 6 FT’s to reach it. The size of Lammers bothered him and that would likely be the case at Cuse with their bigs. .
The 17 rebounds were just as big as his points.
I kinda wish they were tougher teams, so we could experiment with lineups and roles and not miss out as much if ends in a loss. I feel like them next few games have to be wins for us to make the tourney…assuming losses later against tougher competition.
IIRC ND’s last win at Cuse was 2007, 103-91. Carter and Falls each had 4 treys.
Ouch my Bonz…
If anyone wants to offset their pain a bit, Vegas doesn’t look to have reacted very strongly to his absence for tonight. Game opened at Irish by 7, and hasn’t dropped below 6. I think that’s a bit generous for us.
Often you see the first game without a star ends up being a big energy bounce from the backups who know they need to step up. Looks good early for that, but obviously long way to go. I’d expect Vegas to adjust us down about 2-2.5 points in the long term from where they had us before the injury.
I am anxious and worried to see how we respond tonight.
I will hope for the best, but the realist in me thinks an NIT bid and good run will be a positive for next year.
I’m late to the party, but saw some of the Qs on tournaments bids so I might end up repeating some of what I type here in the recap of tonight’s game recap’s comment section.
First off, echoing what everyone else said, “Ow my balls”. It really sucks to have a major injury like that, and the fact that we’ve had good luck recently doesn’t make it any easier. Especially since it’s a guy who’s this beloved. If I’m targeting a date for Bonz to return, it’s the Feb 27th game against Pitt, which would be Senior Night. I really hope he makes it back to play at least a few minutes that game, hopefully give some emotional boost and let the crowd go bananas for him one more time at the JACC. Man, now I’m back to sad.
I defer to the rest of the crew here on their X’s/O’s thoughts on the change, but similar to others on here, my thought was simplify and go fast. In general the gap between the starters and the bench just shrunk, which happens when you remove such a good player, but hopefully this allows Brey to go free flowing with subs and let us open it up. Brey’s system has always been a challenge for young guys to play within, a large part of the reason he doesn’t always give them good minutes. Hopefully he can adjust and shift to a brute force system that allows Burns, Harvey, Djogo and TJ to do the things that already make them good, even if it means a little bit less of the artistry ND usually puts on the court. :
Harvey gets the start. I think that’s the right call by Brey.
Yea it seems if we are going to get the biggest jump from anyone it has to be from the guy with the most talent. He either steps up and we stay competitive or not.
From a wins/losses perspective, it’s a little ugly. It hurts that the only game Bonzie will be 100% for was a super easy home game against GT. Really would have been nice to beat VT or FSU at the JACC and notch that somewhat-coinflippy win and let the team sans-Bonz take their shot at GT. It’s all speculation at this point, and probably heavily is influenced by updated news, but I’d expect to get a small bump in credit for wins without Bonz. I don’t think they’re going to look at a 7-11 team in ACC play and go “but their best player is back” and let us in, but if we’re in the discussion, I’ll bet they take it a bit easy on us (and on whoever we play, because you know the #7 seed we play when we get in as a #10 seed is gonna be mad).
Looking at last year, Virginia Tech got a 9 seed as a 10-8 ACC team who beat ACC-10-seed Wake and lost to FSU in the conference tournament. They had a couple of legitimately good wins vs Duke, Virginia plus Michigan and a bubblicious Ole Miss team in non-con which helped a bunch.
Additionally, Wake Forest got in as an 11 seed (play in) at 9-9 in conference, beat BC, lost to VT in the conf tournament, had one good win (Louisville, very late in the season) and no real bad losses, but nothing impressive in non-conference.
In between there is about 8 other teams with similar resumes from other conferences that look about the same. middling in a good conference or slightly above middling in a less good one, a few ok wins but nothing super special.
The bottom of the ACC is down and we catch most of the bottom teams on the road. GT is bad so at their place should be manageable, but we play NC St both home and road, BC both home and road and Wake on the road. KenPom would tell you that NC State at their place is a coinflip to beat a Louisville/VT/Clemson type team, which means it’s less than that for us (assuming our quality is below them by 10-20 spots). So while those 6 games seem manageable, the fact that 4 of those 6 are on the road is ugly. Add on the fact that we’ve already dropped games to Ball St and to possible bubble foe Indiana *WITH* Bonzie kinda cancels out our win vs Wichita and doesn’t bode real well.
*TL;DR version:
Probably need to find a way to get to 9-9 and make it to the QFs in Brooklyn to feel ok.
We’ll be pleading our case hard at 8-10, although we’d have a shot if we had some big scalps and the 10-13th teams in the ACC (BC/Wake/NC St) end up being better than most think.*
I know NC State @home is supposed to be the second-easiest game for the rest of the season, but tonight’s performance was still really something, even in the second half without Farrell. To the extent he’s not out for too long, there may be some re-recalibration of where things go from here if they can keep playing like that.