Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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MEN'S BASKETBALL Dec. 13, scoring an expected 1.18 points per possession against an average de‑ fense. The Irish finished the 2014‑15 sea‑ son second nationally, but they were slightly more efficient at 1.23 points per possession. The continuity in offensive success is also a testament to the staff for pre‑ paring the team in the offseason for the new shot clock era. From the 1993‑94 season to 2014‑15, college basketball was played with a 35‑second shot clock — this season that's been lowered to just 30 seconds. "I'm having them play patient and get a good shot," Brey said. "To understand that we have to reverse the ball twice a lot of times; it's a principle we talk about. We do that a lot in five‑on‑zero to drill it. "The one thing pace‑wise is we've tried to get the ball in quicker on makes. Our efficiency is very high, so I don't want to mess with our half‑court pace. The rhythm we got in the second half against Illinois [an 84‑79 Notre Dame victory Dec. 2], and the second half the other night, that's a familiar feel offen‑ sively for us. Maybe that shot clock is getting down to single digits and we're making a play, whether it's a drive, a post feed and a read from Zach [Au‑ guste] or a ball screen." Kinks still need to be worked out of course, but the early data shows Notre Dame has overcome replacing its two stars from last season on the offensive end. Starting a second post player in sophomore forward Bonzie Colson — as opposed to last year's lineup with four perimeter players and one big man — had caused a bit of stagnation at times in spacing and movement. Nevertheless, the productivity has still been there. Starting the two post play‑ ers together has enabled Notre Dame to enforce a stronger presence on the glass. Brey's team corralled an offensive rebound on 34.0 percent of its potential chances to start the year, which ranked 79th nationally. That's the highest out‑ put since the 2009‑10 season — former Irish standout Luke Harangody's senior year. "It's probably a little bit better every week," Brey said of the spacing with the big men. "We're never going to look as pretty with those two guys, but they do some things like rebounding the ball where I'm okay with us not being as aes‑ thetically pleasing as maybe the smaller lineup. "I thought Bonzie is getting great with the ball facing the bucket, like dribble exchange, ball screening and helping. Zach, both of those guys now can step out and space the floor. We shot 55 per‑ cent from the floor against Stony Brook [an 86‑61 Irish win Dec. 8] — we were pretty efficient there." DEFENSE CAN IMPROVE Anticipating that it might take time for his offense to jell with the adjusted starting lineup, Brey made a bold asser‑ tion in the preseason. "Our defense is ahead of our offense right now," Brey said at media day in October. "And that's really not been the case here in our program, but I can say that right now. "And I think a lot of it is just the bod‑ ies that are added. [Demetrius] Jackson and [Steve] Vasturia are two of the better