We all remember our first cell phone. Mine was a pretty run-of-the-mill flip phone, with T9 on the ten-digit pad. My parents bought it for me in 2008 on my fourteenth birthday. I was a freshman in high school.
I have a lot of memories with that phone. Texting for the first time. Playing endless rounds of a Tetris demo while on the john. Winding up and throwing the phone off my mother’s couch midway through the first half of a Notre Dame game at the Carrier Dome, then storming to my bedroom to cool off. Looking back on the play-by-play from that day, sixteen years ago this past Friday, I think I might have thrown the phone after Jonny Flynn found Eric Devendorf for a layup, stretching the Syracuse lead well past the ten-point mark. Frustrations with Luke Harangody’s ill-fated Dirk imitations defined that season, and at that point in that game, Harangody was 3-for-10 from the floor, on pace for a 12-for-40 showing.
Yesterday, Notre Dame went to whatever Syracuse renamed the Carrier Dome and frustrated once again. I have a different phone now, but it too went sailing into a couch cushion, yet again with Eric Devendorf in my head. It was late in the second half. Nikita Konstantynovskyi had just gifted Eddie Lampkin Jr. a three-point play after gifting Eddie Lampkin Jr. an easy offensive rebound. Kyle Cuffe was mauling Markus Burton, the refs only noticed when Cuffe also bowled over a screener, and that hybrid rat/blobfish Eric Devendorf was pretending on the call that the decrepit men in black and white stripes were giving Notre Dame the benefit of the doubt. I lost my shit. My dog left the room. Sixteen years and one day later, we still weren’t tough enough to play basketball at Syracuse.
Notre Dame didn’t lose yesterday because the ACC let a roundly-maligned WNBA ref onto one of its courts. Notre Dame lost yesterday because Notre Dame wasn’t and isn’t tough enough.
Early in the afternoon, Syracuse tried to beat Notre Dame at basketball, and it didn’t work. Notre Dame ran all over the floor, every shot was open, and every shot went in. In the second half, Syracuse tried to beat Notre Dame at stabbing Notre Dame with knives, and it worked to perfection. Notre Dame handled it terribly. This was a road game, and it was a full-slated Saturday. In a setting like that, you have to be ready for low-tier refs to call the game a variety of ways. Notre Dame wasn’t ready. Notre Dame responded to the mob violence with bewilderment, then more bewilderment. The first batch of bewilderment was fair. At some point, though, it stops being surprising. At some point, you need to adjust. Even Micah Shrewsberry’s ejection came too late. If he wanted to make any impact on the officiating of that game, he needed to make his point sooner. Instead, he let Brian O’Connell’s crew look past hack after hack until the outcome was already settled. A double technical was the right idea, but one technical, acquired earlier, would have done more to level out the court.
Similarly, it was too bad Kebba Njie didn’t get more out of his flagrant, if he was going to get himself called for a flagrant in the first place. He didn’t administer a black eye. He didn’t draw blood. I’d prefer Njie could just hold his own in the paint against European freshmen forty pounds lighter than him, like the respectable big man he should be, but with that evidently off the table and a flagrant evidently on the table, it was a shame he didn’t get his money’s worth.
We’ve known this team is mentally fragile. It was evident against Elon, and again against UNC, and again against NC State. At some point in each of those games, Notre Dame had the chance to wrap it up. On all three occasions, Notre Dame failed to do so, and as we’ve said so many times now, Notre Dame then shat down Notre Dame’s leg as the minutes ticked down. Yesterday, it happened again. But yesterday, the physical weakness shone through as well.
Njie, Konstantynovskyi, Julian Roper, and J.R. Konieczny are the closest things Notre Dame has to players who can keep their feet when a game becomes a fist fight. None of them besides Roper—who got himself hit in the nuts yesterday while nearly putting up a 12-trillion—consistently do keep their feet in those settings. The rest of the roster? Too slight of frame to do anything but bleed. Tae Davis hustles, but he’s a skinny guy, well-equipped for a five-out game and terribly equipped for a throwback to the 90’s. Markus Burton is scrappy as hell, but I’m not sure he weighs one hundred pounds. He’s a cat in a wolf fight, his body getting rag-dolled all over various CBI-worthy floors. We will not discuss Braeden Shrewsberry and Matt Allocco in this context at this time.
It’s a weak roster, and I mean that in terms of physical strength. It’s a weak roster, and I mean that in terms of mental composure.
The hope had been that with Burton back, Micah Shrewsberry would get the offense clicking and the heads right in the locker room, and that we would enjoy a nice run of Irish wins pushing this team to what talent says is their natural habitat: The top half of a bad ACC. Maybe that can still happen. Each of the next nine games is one a bubble team would be asked to win. But right now, it looks a little hopeless. This team is easy to rattle and easy to beat up. It’s at the point where things even look bleak for next year, where the wave of highly-touted recruits will get their heads knocked off if those already in the program don’t grow into veteran roles. That’s what Allocco was supposed to be this year. He isn’t doing it. Nobody else is filling the void.
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There’s no weeknight game this week. Next up is Virginia, in Charlottesville, on Saturday. We’ll be back on Friday to talk about that one. Tomorrow, we’ll have a post up about the national championship, but that won’t be under the Good Things Shrewing name. We remain huge Micah Shrewsberry fans. We think his ceiling is national championship high, which would have sounded insane to say in the Mike Brey era (and we loved Brey too). But we need to separate our men’s basketball stuff from what we write about the rest of the sports at this university. Mostly for business reasons for this blog, but also because I can’t whipsaw between weeping with admiration for Marcus Freeman and trying to figure out if I can personally give Kebba Njie anabolic steroids. I think they would work. We need him stronger and angrier. I can’t believe we let J.J. Starling beat us.
