So It Goes: Fightin' Irish Fall At Home To Villanova
Notre Dame Basketball will not make the NCAA Tournament.
In the words of the late Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.
Tonight's 77-60 loss at home at the hands of Scottie Reynolds, Dante Cunningham and Shane Clark (Shane Clark?) drove the final nail into the coffin built with a seven-game losing streak and lined with losses to Ohio State and St. John's. Perhaps the saddest part of the defeat was how unsurprising it was.
Kurt knew.
The guard play was anemic: Jackson, Peoples and McAlarney went a combined 4-of-22 from the floor and 1-of-11 from three-point range with nine turnovers to eleven assists. Free throw shooting was a pathetic 10-of-20 (Someone get Ty Nash with a shooting coach five months ago). Harangody, Ayers and Nash did what they were supposed to do, but the rest, especially the last ten minutes of the second half, was a disaster.
The Irish made exactly zero field goals in a seven-minute stretch from approximately eleven to four minutes left in the game and, frankly, looked lost on offense. Yet, nothing looked out of the ordinary.
The sad truth of this season was that this Irish team was exactly what they were and, save the Louisville and Providence wins, nothing more. An undersized but spectacular force down low (Gody) surrounded by one great shooter (Kmac), one solid set shooter (Ayers), one increasingly erratic point guard (Tory) and one of four bit players (Zeller, Nash, Peoples and Hillesland) NONE of whom play defense, is not enough to get by with on the hardest schedules in the toughest conference.
For many Irish faithful who remember the 2005-2006 Season of Infinite Sorrow, this season, tonight's game, are all too familiar sights. Maybe it's the coach, maybe we over-achieved the last two season, maybe Rob Kurz is the greatest basketball player of all time and world's great mistake is not recognizing it - at the end of the day, and with one more home game left, there is nothing to say but, "So it goes."
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We obviously have a long time to talk about this, but I agree 100%. I think it’s just that the team was a little worse/no different from last year and the schedule got a lot harder. Blame who you want, but we are what we are.
http://www.rakesofmallow.com
This year has been a failure for one reason
too much three point shooting and not enough aggressiveness offensively or defensively. What happened to the aggressiveness of the Louisville blowout? A one week wonder?
There’s also the lack of a big man to play next to harangdoy. nobody else plays near the basket other than Harangody. Too much attention gets drawn to him because teams know if it’s not going to him, than we’re just going to shoot three point shots that never really fall in. We don’t draw enough fouls, bad transition defense, bad transition offense, lack of forced turnovers, to many points in the paint allowed, the list of problems goes on and on. The blame lies with mike brey as he’s not even attempting to change our scheme except for the aforementioned Louisville game.
How sad is it that I’ve bet 50 bucks with my friends that St. John beats us by more than 10 points?
With the drafting of Manu and Parker and the signing of Oberto, the International Basketball era began in San Antonio. showing that all of the world's people can, in fact, come together in peace and harmony. After all, every nationality loves to kick the Hornets' asses.
In regards to three point shooting...
That’s the lazy reason Irish fans will give as a reason the team isn’t playing well or why Mike Brey sucks.
2009: Notre Dame takes a three 34.1% of the time they take a shot, good for 138th in the nation
2008: Notre Dame takes a three 31.5% of the time they take a shot, good for 104th in the nation
It’s a slight bump, but not the reason for the drop. Notre Dame isn’t even in the top 100 in the nation in regards to number of threes taken.
http://www.rakesofmallow.com
by CW on Mar 4, 2009 12:01 AM EST up reply actions
but i don't see us
getting very many points in the paint.
With the drafting of Manu and Parker and the signing of Oberto, the International Basketball era began in San Antonio. showing that all of the world's people can, in fact, come together in peace and harmony. After all, every nationality loves to kick the Hornets' asses.

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