The Irish started off the weekend in New York City, visiting St. John’s at the Garden.  St. John’s has not had the start of the season they were looking for, dropping their first conference game to rebuilding Providence by 21 points.  Going in, Notre Dame had an "easy" opponent before it’s big test against Georgetown on Big Monday.  But as we’ve said before, there is no "easy" in the Big East.  At least for the Irish away from the Joyce Center.  I’ll throw out one stat and you tell me if Notre Dame won this game.  ND went 4 of 17 from behind the arc.  The kiss of death, right?  Right.  The Irish lost 71-65 despite Luke Harangody’s 28 points and Tory Jackson’s 14.  St. John’s played a good game but if Notre Dame played to it’s potential, they would have blown them out.  The good news is that they play St. John’s again, a game which will be very big for the committee.  There is no defense to losing to St. John’s two times in a season.

Monday brought a new test for the Irish squad when #10 Georgetown came into the Joyce Center looking for a win after a tough/embarrassing loss to Pitt (at least it wasn’t a loss to St. John’s) with Notre Dame riding on a 43-game winning streak at the JACC, the nation’s longest current streak.  Thanks to some bad offense on Georgetown’s part and another great performance by Luke Harangody and solid help from Tory Jackson, Kyle McAlarney, Ryan Ayers, and even Luke Zeller, the Irish controlled most of the game and won 73-67 to keep the streak alive at 44 wins.  The win was huge for Notre Dame after the loss to SJU and gave the committee another strong performance along with their Texas win.  Mike Brey’s team still has a tough road ahead of them in the Big East, but I think with the way things are falling, if the Irish can somehow get to 9 wins in conference, they should be good to go.  I think they have much more potential than that, but I think they are in barring an injury or a late season collapse.

Harangody had another solid performance with 31 points and 11 rebounds

I had realized Luke Harangody was doing well, but I went to look at his stats and he is a legitimate 1^st team, unanimous All-American.  Thus far this season, he’s averaging 24.1 PPG (top in the Big East, sixth in the country) and 12.4 RPG (second in the Big East, third in the country).  Sure a lot of that came against the Savannah States of the world, but he’s also averaged 24.5 PPG in the four games he’s played against top 25 teams.  Hats off to him as he’s worked hard and paid his dues.  He’s certainly not the most flashy player out there, but he’s one of the best to ever wear an Irish uniform and there are few better players out there than Luke.