Notre Dame

Coming off the heels of getting crushed by Pitt, this loss to Notre Dame was even harder to swallow. The reality is that in the JTIII era victories for us on a Monday after playing on Saturday have been few and far between and I can almost guarantee that we have not won a road game on Monday in Big East play after playing the previous Saturday. Notre Dame had a 43 game winning streak at home going into tonight's game and had won 18 Big East home games in a row. As a team we did not look very good at all. All of that being said, if we shot by our normal standards from the line (75%) and Notre Dame shot by theirs (65%) instead of us shooting 59% and them shooting 93%, we probably win the game. Tory Jackson, ND's point guard, is a 50% FT shooter but he went 4-4. (missing FT's is a sign of fatigue and since we have no depth and just played on Monday, it is not unexpected that we would shoot worse from the line than normal)

Dajuan Summers getting into early foul trouble did not help. He has also started to show signs of getting way too whiny in games and he seems to get caught up complaining with the refs which would seem to mean that he is being easily distracted and taken out of his game. When he was in the game though, he was extremely effective. He was 5-5 from the line and was taking the ball to the basket with authority. I think two of his fouls were offensive and they were both the result of him being too aggressive. I would hate for him to lose the edge he has gained to his game and his attitude and some players risk that happening if they don't play very amped up, but he has to find a balance. We are not going to beat a good BE team - which is what Notre Dame is, as painful as that is to admit, if we aren't shooting the ball well and missing FT's and not having Dajuan on the floor. The kid played 22 minutes and had 11 points. If he had kept his head in the game and his a$$ on the floor, he would have put up 18 if not more. They were not stopping him.

Chris Wright had another sub-par game. He can't go 5-14 from the floor and 1-6 from three point land. I don't know if people have figured him out already or what but he seemed to force things at times. That being said, when he was on, he was really on and they couldn't stop him either. He seemed to get too excited and emotional during the game and he does not seem to be able to play well that way.

It was very disappointing that we wasted two good bench contributions. Jason Clark played 24 minutes and had 5 points, 2 blocks, 3 assists and 4 rebounds and made his presence felt on the defensive end. He even goal-tended one of Hangody's shots (don't even get me started on that pig. I think I have to give some relectant and overdue props to Hibbert because Harangody never, ever was able to do what he did last night against us when Roy was around, clearly can't have somebody go for 30+ points and 10+ rebounds against us and expect to win either.) He will continue to develop as the season goes on and will help us a lot. More importantly was that Henry Sims was on the floor for over ten minutes and didn't look completely lost. His follow-up dunk was nice. He needs to get his confidence up and go ahead and take some of the shots the defense was giving him. He can hit the mid-range jumper. If only we could get Sims to think he is as good offensively as Vaughn thinks he is, then we might have something. . . The stat line shows Sims only getting two rebounds but I seem to remember them being pretty nice rebounds because they stood out to me. Maybe it was just those two. Can we say that he should get a little star next to each rebound he got at least? They were good boards. Anyway, good to see that he and Clark were on the court and contributing.

Freeman was a non-factor. We could have used some help from him tonight and God bless Jessie Sapp but 7 points on 2-7 shooting isn't going to cut it either from our senior leader. All of this leads me to Monroe . . . .

You all saw what he can do. He is a multi-dimensional player on both sides of the court. So many things to point out but one thing that really stood out to me was that no look, back-to- the- basket(may not have been back to the basket but whatever) kind of wrap-around interior bounce pass he threw to Summers who threw it down hard. That was a sick play. He is really good. He needs to stay another year or we need to grow up around him really fast because he is the kind of guy you can win something with.

We now have to beat Providence.