Just when you thought the Fighting Irish had finally solved their road woes with that 103-91 spanking of Syracuse, they go and lose to one of the worst teams in the Big East. South Florida 69, Notre Dame 63, final. Yikes. That’s the second time this season ND has lost a road game to one of the teams in the bottom quarter of the Big East (teams that, if the season ended today, wouldn’t even quality for the conference tournament), the other being St. John’s. A commenter on Rakes of Mallow says, “This could be Brey’s wors[t] loss of his career.”
Not good. Notre Dame is now 2-5 away from the Joyce Center and 1-4 in true road games. You think Jay Bilas is rethinking his prediction that the Irish are a “dark-horse candidate” to reach the Final Four? I would agree, if the first four rounds of the tournament were being played at the JACC!
The news was better today for Gonzaga, which beat Pepperdine 82-57 despite “committing 28 very ridiculous turnovers,” and for USC, which, as I mentioned earlier, beat #9 Oregon for the second time this season, 71-68.
Ducks, you may consider yourselves plucked.
In other college-basketball news, N.C. State stunned #3 North Carolina, 83-79; Iowa brought Indiana back down to earth after its big win over #2 Wisconsin, beating the Hoosiers 81-75; Air Force destroyed a depleted Wyoming team, 88-43, the largest margin in Mountain West conference history; Missouri Valley co-leaders Southern Illinois and Creighton kept pace with one another by winning road games over Wichita State, 54-46, and Drake, 67-62, respectively; UCLA crushed Oregon State, 82-35; Arizona destroyed Washington, 84-54, possibly putting the final nail in the Huskies’ NCAA coffin; Arizona State almost got its first Pac-10 win of the season, losing 48-47 to Wazzu; and Iona got its first win of the season, period, 69-57 over Rider, to improve to 1-22.
UPDATE: BlackAndGreen notes that Notre Dame was one of 10 ranked teams to lose on Saturday, but finds little consolation in that fact. A commenter calls this “a typical Mike Brey loss. Just when I get excited about the potential of this team, they [lose] a game they’re supposed to win.”
So… Fire Mike Brey? I’m not going there at this point. But this loss does validate what I said when an anonymous commenter called me out for criticizing Brey last year: the jury is still out, both on this season and on Brey. It’s premature to declare this season a success, let alone Mike Brey a good coach on the basis of this season.
This team has a lot of potential, but in terms of results on the court, they’ve built a gaudy record (16-5) mostly on the basis of an unbalanced schedule (16 home games, 7 road/neutral games) and a weaker-than-usual Big East slate. Their two non-conference “statement” wins were over once-ranked teams, Alabama and Maryland, that are now struggling just to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. (Both are among the top four teams left out in Joe Lunardi’s latest Bracketology projections.) The win over Syracuse, a #9 seed according to Lunardi, is clearly Notre Dame’s biggest of the season; the only other tournament teams (according to Lunardi) that the Irish have beaten are #12 seeds West Virginia and Villanova, and both of those games were at the Joyce. And those are now balanced by two very bad road losses.
As for Brey, I stand by what I wrote on that previous thread:
The reason I was anti-Brey coming into this season (and don’t act like I was the only one, or that every single person who disliked him is “ignorant of the game”) is because I saw the team consistently looking stagnant and clueless on offense and consistently falling behind early only to rally late and then run out of steam (which most people attributed exclusively to “luck,” but while luck clearly played a role, the heinous first-half performances also played a huge role). Both of those observations were completely true, and I stand by them. The primary reason they are doing better this season is because those two things have stopped happening. The team has stopped playing like they’re dead in the first half, and they’re being more aggressive and creative on offense, and actually running plays instead of standing around the perimeter for 20 seconds and then having the point guard shoot a 3 without ever trying to penetrate, which happened far too often in the last two years (sometimes after a timeout!!).
Look, it is possible that I was completely wrong about Brey. It is clearly too early to make a final judgment on this team — most of their 18 wins are at home, many of them over teams like Elon and Winston-Salem State; the true test will be in the postseason, and in future years — but if the success continues, if the quality of play continues to stay at the current level or improve, then I’ll happily concede that I was wrong and Brey is a good coach who had a rough couple of years.
But it’s not time for a concession speech just yet. Especially given that, according to Charles Rich at AOL Fanhouse, one of the Irish’s mistakes Saturday was repeating one of the very problems that was — as I mentioned — endemic the previous two years: “The big surprise was that Notre Dame settled for a lot more jump shots and not driving to the basket or just trying to go inside to Rob Kurz and Luke Harangody on offense as much.”
February 4th, 2007 at 2:04:48 am
Kurz wasn’t 100% and it showed. Without a solid inside presence, ND’s only real offensive option is to make quick shots and hope to drain enough. It worked against Syracuse, but not against South Florida.
When you’re ice-cold shooting and don’t have the inside guys to clean the boards, you’re going to have a problem beating anybody, be it the very best teams or South Florida.
And the bench played dismally, too. Ayers was the only non-starter who scored any points, and he had 3. But depth is a problem when two regular starters can’t be there; ND is a much better team with Harangody and Jackson coming off the bench instead of in the starting lineup.
Incidentally, I think Indiana stays in the Top 25 because of their win over Wisconsin.
February 4th, 2007 at 2:10:18 am
Good point about the win over Wisconsin. I forgot that happened after the #25 ranking, rather than being what precipitated it. I’ll edit the post accordingly.
February 4th, 2007 at 9:02:03 am
Grrr…a true lack of consistency. I didn’t see any of yesterday’s game, nor follow it via Gametracker, but from what I’ve read, it sounds like Kurz was obviously not full strength and Hillesland picked up some quick fouls. Obviously, when things like that happen, great teams will have other players who step it up, and ND isn’t on the “great” level.
That being said, I would have expected 1-1 for the week, it just happened in the games opposite of what I expected.
February 4th, 2007 at 12:13:06 pm
I would have expected 1-1 for the week, it just happened in the games opposite of what I expected.
Yeah, kinda like the first two games of the 2004 football season.
What happened to that team’s coach, anyway?
;)
February 4th, 2007 at 2:58:02 pm
Sadly, I had to go back and Google the 2004 season to remind myself of what happened there. I put most of that out of memory :-)
Brey’s got a pass from me though for the year, unlike Ty. He has recruited some pretty good talent and he’s got at least one good assistant who seems to be doing decent things with the program. I don’t disagree with you though, somehow the coaches need to get that team motivated to win on the road, and if the problem perpetuates itself through the remainder of the season with some easier road games on the schedule, I may reevaluate.
February 5th, 2007 at 9:59:53 pm
I wouldn’t be so quick to count out U-Dub. Aside from a trip to the Oregon schools, which I’d expect them at a minimum to split 1-1, fUTLA, USC, WSU, Stanford, and Cal all go to Seattle. 4-3 the rest of the way means no worse than 8-10 in the Pac-10 and either 19-11 or 18-12 overall. With a decent showing in the Pac-10 tourney (i.e., at least two wins), they could be in (no worse than 20-13 overall).