Saturday’s game was almost ideal, but because it wasn’t, and because it ended up being very far from ideal, a list of people you don’t want fouling a three-point shooter when you’re up by three in the closing seconds:
- Your veteran presence.
- Your Ivy League transfer.
- Your own three-point shooter.
- The guy who’s too slow to play effective defense anyway.
All of those guys are guys who should know better. Fortunately for Notre Dame, they’re all the same person, but unfortunately for Notre Dame, that person—Matt Allocco, who did know better and is having a strong season outside of Saturday’s ending—couldn’t help himself. Allocco fouled Elliott Cadeau as Cadeau came down from the game-tying three, allowing Cadeau to make what became the game-winning free throw. Setting aside that someone should have fouled Cadeau on the floor, before he had a chance to shoot, it was a very bad play. Notre Dame went on to lose the game.
But while the play was bad, the game wasn’t. Markus Burton came back, and he looked exactly like Markus Burton despite missing so much time and playing on a presumably still-recovering knee. Some scattered thoughts, then, ahead of NC State on Wednesday:
- If UNC wasn’t such a disappointment to themselves, their school, and their families, Notre Dame wouldn’t have even been in this one. Allocco wouldn’t have had a chance to foul Cadeau and ruin it. Really, UNC toyed with us by playing so poorly.
- UNC’s in that second wave of ACC teams, the start of the pack behind Duke. Yes, the game was at home, but if Notre Dame can play with teams in that second wave, Notre Dame has a chance to win some games they shouldn’t and boost that résumé. We’re not in a “take care of business” situation. We’re in a situation where we need to overachieve.
- Garrett Sundra picked up those four fouls fast. One minute, you’re saying, “Wow, Garrett Sundra’s played a lot today. Guess we want to rebound.” The next, Garrett Sundra is showing up on CBS’s foul trouble graphic and you’re trying to figure out when it all went down.
- It’s still pretty early in the season. We have over two months until we even get to the ACC Tournament. The Irish are in a hole, but a lot can happen.
- Don’t expect too much sympathy for playing without Burton unless we’re good enough to make the tournament anyway. The Elon loss came with Burton on the floor.
NC State’s been more disappointing than we’ve been, and they didn’t even lose their best player for a month, so that’s good. The game’s in Raleigh, though, and that’s bad. The Wolfpack brought a lot of guys back from last year’s Final Four squad, but not the guys you probably remember. Expect NC State to be favored by a handful.
Maddy Westbeld: Also Back
On the women’s side, Maddy Westbeld returned from her early-season foot surgery, and the Irish got a big road win over UNC. From here out, Bart Torvik’s site has Notre Dame at least a 79% favorite in each remaining regular season game. Some are tougher than others, but a home date on Thursday with a rough Wake Forest squad should be a tune-up. Just need to take care of business.
Is Penn State Better Than Us?
Moving up to the top of the mind.
Beating Georgia was a really big deal. Georgia’s won two of the last three national championships. Georgia was one of the top-ranked teams in the country the whole season. Georgia had a ton of NFL talent.
Beating Penn State, though, should be more difficult.
We don’t know for sure that it will be. It’s possible Georgia’s better than the ratings systems say. ESPN’s two systems—SP+ and FPI—average to say Penn State’s about a point better than the Dawgs. Movelor, our own power rating system, says Penn State’s more than four points stronger. It’s hard to know, and Gunner Stockton and Abdul Carter and Rylie Mills all complicate things, but there’s a decent chance Penn State is better than Georgia, and that raises the scarier question, the one we asked above:
Is Penn State better than us?
We talked a little about this on Friday, but it would really stink to lose to Penn State. We came this far. We got past Georgia. Now, needing only one more win to get our best shot at a title in at least twelve years…Penn State? The program that’s lately been a mostly worse version of us?
It is possible, though, and to hear some tell it, it’s even likely. Notre Dame is not a significant favorite on Thursday. If Carter—Penn State’s all-world defensive end—does play, the number will squeeze even closer to even. Notre Dame has not made the national championship yet. Notre Dame is facing what’s probably its toughest opponent of the season, and that opponent has had the luxury of preparing a bit for Notre Dame. Penn State knew it was going to beat SMU and Boise State. It just didn’t know if it’d be us or Georgia in the Orange Bowl.
To go back to those ratings systems from above: SP+ likes Penn State by fractions of a point. FPI likes us by four. Movelor is fairly close to FPI. What does all that mean? Basically, Penn State probably achieves its goal on a higher percentage of plays than we do, but we move the ball better and prevent others from moving the ball. We gain yards. We don’t allow our opponents to gain yards. It just happens in fits and starts. Lastly, our final scores bear the yardage piece out. What shows up in the points (what Movelor uses) is more similar to yards per play (what FPI heavily uses) than to success rate (what SP+ heavily uses). All of that’s adjusted for the strength of each of our respective opponents, but that’s what those systems mean. SP+ is largely about winning plays. FPI is largely about yards per play. Movelor is all about final score.
What do we take away from this? We probably are the better team. But it’s tight, and we’re just as banged up as they are, if not more banged up.
The updates on Howard Cross and Jeremiyah Love seem fairly positive. They reportedly appeared limited in open practice this weekend, but they were out there doing drills. Cross would be a bigger loss in this game than Love.
Unlike Georgia’s, Penn State’s rushing attack is rather proven this year. Penn State can gash teams on the ground, especially when those teams are down one and a half great defensive tackles. On passing downs, we’re aided in the matchup by Penn State’s receiving strength coming at tight end, not wide receiver. Tyler Warren is a headache, but we don’t necessarily need Christian Gray to play the game of his life. Our defense’s strength right now starts with the safeties. That’s a good place to be strong when facing a guy who can produce offensively like Rob Gronkowski.
Still, like Gronkowski, Warren’s going to be tough to stop. I’m hopeful that we can get to Drew Allar and rattle him—Allar’s good, but he sure looked rattle-able against Boise State—but again, without Cross, that gets harder. Hopefully we’re deeper at defensive tackle than we realize. Part of what makes Love’s knee less concerning is that we already know how deep we are at running back. The front seven did look strong against Georgia with the exception of that one early drive, the one Adon Shuler ended with the forced fumble on Etienne.
Offensively, Carter and his sidekick, Dani Dennis-Sutton, bookend a tough defensive line. Penn State’s should be the best defense we’ve seen all year, even if they’re not as talented as Georgia’s unit. (They should also be the best offense we’ve seen all year. It does really appear they’re the best team we’ve seen all season to this point.) Safety Kevin Winston Jr. is out for the year, and Carter’s a question mark, but defense is something James Franklin’s Nittany Lions have customarily done well. Expect a good, disciplined team. Expect to have to win in the trenches again. Hope that Mike Denbrock has some good ideas on how to pick on Penn State’s inexperienced, sometimes-questioned corners.
Can James Franklin win the big game? I certainly hope not. That narrative’s easy to overblow, though. Penn State’s big problem the last ten years has been being an A-minus team in a division always featuring at least one A-plus team. Whether it’s been Michigan, Ohio State, or both, Penn State’s always operated lately under an externally imposed ceiling. This year, Oregon joined the mix.
I worry that a lot of what Franklin gets teased for could be better explained by “his teams aren’t quite good enough” than “he always blows the big game.” With Ryan Day, big game performance is a reasonable critique. With James Franklin, it seems more accurate to call the challenge one of getting over the hump.
It’s encouraging that Penn State got a little stupid against Ohio State, taking a game Will Howard desperately tried to gift them and blowing it in part through getting cute inside the five-yard line. It’s not encouraging that Penn State let Allar sling it a little against Oregon in that Big Ten Championship, and that it worked so well that Penn State clawed back into the game.
The bottom line? These guys are, again, a lot like us. Their demons are different, and their strengths are different, and their injuries are different. But they are not uniformly talented like Georgia, Ohio State, and Texas. They are playing to their ceiling, again unlike Georgia and Texas (and until these last two games, Ohio State). Their best isn’t good enough to beat everybody else’s best. But it’s still very good. I’m afraid of taking them too lightly, having seen the shock and awe out of Ohio State and feeling that natural inclination to look ahead.
That’s a lot about them and not a lot about us. We know ourselves better than we know them. We know our defense can swarm, and that our offensive line is stronger than it looks, and that Xavier Watts and Adon Shuler are lethal. We know we’ve been playing our best for a long time now, and we don’t know if we can elevate ourselves any further, but the nice thing here is that theoretically, our best should be a little bit better than theirs, given they aren’t exactly teeming with NFL talent either. We know we probably have a scheme advantage, because that’s been the norm most of this year. Focus is really the question, and thankfully, that’s something we’ve tended to do well since September ended.
Hopefully, we can get Allar off his game, put together a couple long first-half scoring drives, and stay in the driver’s seat. The bad scenario is that Allar and Warren hit us in the mouth and we have to play from behind. What’s more likely is a slowed-down version of what we saw when Penn State played Oregon: A game where we keep cutting the snake’s head off but it keeps growing back.
We’ll reconvene on Friday, hopefully with a national championship berth to discuss. Until then, Go Irish. How lucky we are to have Marcus Freeman.
