Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM MARCH 2025 91 end in a loss to Elon back in November. He also fouled a three-point shooter while the Irish led by three in the final seconds as they blew a late lead against North Carolina. Allocco has done some of what Notre Dame asked him to do; he's allowed Bur- ton to play off the ball more and become a much better three-point shooter. But too often, he's represented a frustrating lack of progress that is certainly not lim- ited to just the Princeton transfer. The Fighting Irish are too passive. They cannot close out games. Burton's injury is no longer an excuse; he's been back for a month and the Miami game dropped the team to 3-5 since his return. In the week that followed, things went from bad to worse. The Irish fell 67-60 at Florida State Feb. 4 and were edged 65-63 at home versus Virginia Tech Feb. 8. UNFORCED TURNOVERS DEFINE BRUTAL LOSS TO VIRGINIA TECH Freshman guard Sir Mohammed tried to take a dribble handoff from junior forward Kebba Njie in the second half of Notre Dame's to the Hokies. The ball glanced off Mohammed's body and into the backcourt for a violation. Mohammed gave Njie a look after the whistle blew that said, "Come on, man." But fault on that play didn't particularly matter. Everyone in a green uniform had a hand in Notre Dame's two-point defeat, because those hands couldn't catch the basketball. The Irish turned it over 17 times in their third straight loss, falling to 10-13 overall and 4-8 in the ACC. Many were self-inflicted mistakes. "It's a focus thing for our group," Shrewsberry said. "When we're doing stuff, it's like, 'I'm supposed to get a catch. I gotta get a catch.' That's a focus thing. That's a toughness thing. Nobody should stop me from getting the ball where I want to get it. "You can't have those turnovers late where we're just — we can't move it from side to side, because we're throw- ing the ball out of bounds and we're turning it over." The gut punch was that Virginia Tech was almost equally sloppy. The Hok- ies shot 39.3 percent from the field and 19.4 percent from beyond the arc. They turned it over 13 times. But they figured out a way to win when it mattered most, and the Irish did not. Notre Dame led 18-4 at the halfway point of the first half, because Virginia Tech legitimately could not do any- thing right. The Hokies committed 4 turnovers and made 2 field goals in the game's first 10 minutes. A serious bas- ketball team would have buried them, but the Irish did not. "At 18-4, they get a bucket and then we get a technical foul, so then they go on an 8-0 run, right?" Shrewsberry said. "They get free throws, then they score right after that and it just kind of crushes our momentum at that play." For the technical foul (called on senior guard Julian Roper II) and the 22-9 run that it aided, the Irish have nobody to blame but themselves. Or, as Shrewsberry put it, himself. "I'll take the blame on this," Shrews- berry said. "I'm the one calling the plays down the stretch. I gotta put us in a bet- ter position." Nothing Shrewsberry called down the stretch worked. The Irish made two field goals between the 13-minute mark and the 18-second mark of the second half, both mid-range jump shots by Burton. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech slowly but surely chipped away at Notre Dame's lead. If the Irish were simply getting out- talented in these games, that would be one thing. But while this team is clearly not as talented as Shrewsberry and his staff thought it was, that's not what's happening here. Notre Dame fails to do the little things — sometimes as little as catching the ball with two hands — with any consistency. "We're undisciplined," Shrewsberry said. "We got 17 turnovers. Maybe we do need to do something different in practice so we're not turning the ball over. Whatever it is, we're gonna find it. But I put the groups out there that aren't scoring at the end of the game. So it falls on me." Notre Dame continues to insist that it has the right pieces, but too often, those pieces don't make sense. Case in point: With 5:23 left and the Irish hanging on by a thread, sopho- more Logan Imes checked into the game. Imes, a seldom-used guard who hadn't played more than 10 minutes in a game since Dec. 22 against Le Moyne, looked understandably lost. He had a layup blocked and did not otherwise contribute. Singling out Imes is unfair to the player. But his presence exemplified a rotation that didn't appear to have much rhyme or reason to it, particularly in crunch time. "You get to the end of the games, you're trying to play with pace," Shrewsberry said. "Sometimes we look like we're tired out there, right? So I'm trying to get more guys in, trying to be able to play at the right pace. The hard- est thing to do is play short minutes and be really good in those short minutes." Right now, the Irish can't do it. They can't do anything well in single-digit games, in which they're 3-10 this sea- son. This is a team whose progression — and increased maturity, which Njie pointed to as an issue — was supposed to flip several of those close losses to wins. Instead, it's just more of the same. ✦ 2024-25 NOTRE DAME MEN'S BASKETBALL SCHEDULE Date Opponent (TV) Result/Time (ET) Nov. 6 Stonehill W, 89-60 Nov. 11 Buffalo W, 86-77 Nov. 16 at Georgetown W, 84-63 Nov. 19 North Dakota W, 75-58 Nov. 22 Elon L, 84-77 Nov. 26 vs. Rutgers^ L, 85-84 (OT) Nov. 28 vs. Houston^ L, 65-54 Nov. 30 vs. Creighton^ L, 80-76 Dec. 3 at Georgia% L, 69-48 Dec. 7 Syracuse* W, 69-64 Dec. 11 Dartmouth W, 77-65 Dec. 22 Le Moyne W, 91-62 Dec. 31 at Georgia Tech* L, 86-75 Jan. 4 North Carolina* L, 74-73 Jan. 8 at NC State* L, 66-65 Jan. 11 at Duke* L, 86-78 Jan. 13 Boston College* W, 78-60 Jan. 18 at Syracuse* L, 77-69 Jan. 25 at Virginia* W, 74-59 Jan. 28 Georgia Tech* W, 71-68 Feb. 1 at Miami* L, 63-57 Feb. 4 at Florida State* L, 67-60 Feb. 8 Virginia Tech* L, 65-63 Feb. 12 at Boston College* (ESPN2/U) 9 p.m. Feb. 16 Louisville* (ACCN) 8 p.m. Feb. 19 SMU* (ACCN) 7 p.m. Feb. 22 Pittsburgh* (CW) 2:15 p.m. Feb. 26 at Clemson* (ACCN) 7 p.m. Mar. 1 at Wake Forest* (CW) 5:30 p.m. Mar. 5 Stanford* (ESPN2/U) 9 p.m. Mar. 8 California* (ACCN) 4 p.m. Mar. 11-15 ACC Tournament$ TBD ^ Players Era Festival in Las Vegas; % ACC/SEC Challenge; * ACC game; $ at Charlotte, N.C.