** Sometimes offering “Dribbles” is just an absolute blast. Like on Saturday. But this just won’t be one of those times. Yet I will muddle through.
** Let me say this though. I had some really great Dribbles planned for a Panther win. I swear I did.
** I mean … of course, I’m not going to tell you what they were now. But I know everyone would have loved them!!
** So now what I am I supposed to do? How can anyone possibly be up to the task of “Dribbling” after that performance?
** Let’s start with the most immediate ugly truth. 88 points. Do you know the last time Notre Dame scored 88 points this year? I looked it up. It was on November 13 against Youngstown State when they also won 88-81.
** And this was not a sizzling shooting performance by the Lucky Ones. This was a day when the Irish got everything they wanted offensively all game long. The question is why?
** I remember Carl Krauser commenting about going to Notre Dame and hating that dam Leprechaun. Maybe that had something to do with it. I mean … who’s to say?
** But the more likely explanation can be found within our Panthers themselves. Tonight they weren’t good enough. They weren’t even close actually.
** I don’t want to suggest that the effort the Panthers’ employed defensively was substandard. But I will question the preparation. Our Panthers seemed almost always out of place. And this was extremely frustrating because it made our Panthers feel powerless. We haven’t felt that way about them for awhile.
** I believe the biggest culprit was our execution of switches. How often did we find our Panthers in a defensive mismatch? Far too often for sure.
** Another problem was that ND simply tore up our hedge. The hedge is designed to disrupt the opponent’s offense outward, and too many times we saw Fede retreating to recover while ND was already into the extra pass for an open shot on the perimeter.
** Many other times, ND used our hedge against us to get Fede on a guard. He’s quick and athletic for sure. But that wasn’t working.
** Often I’ve come out against the idea of College Basketball coaches needing to make “in-game adjustments.” But this may have indeed been a game when trying a zone may have been worth a shot.
** I understand why that wouldn’t have been Capel’s plan, since ND has some shooters. But those same shooters where already getting plenty of good looks against our man.
** Our maybe after watching the shambles of what Syracuse has made our of their 2-3 zone, maybe Capel never wants to see a 2-3 again.
** Whatever it was, it was left to the Panther offense to try to come up with a way to outscore the Green team. And while we didn’t lay an egg on our end, we weren’t near our best there either.
** It’s been quite a bit of fun watching the Panthers have a distinct advantage at the foul line so often this year, which made this 56% effort so perplexing. Just an average Panther performance from the line could have provided enough points to make up tonight’s needed difference.
** The missing piece that troubled me the most though was how Notre Dame was so effectively able to take Greg Elliot out of his game. He been such an important Panther weapon as of late, but he rarely was able to get any kind of a look in the half court today.
** But I will go to my comment from the top. 88 points. Because 81 points should be enough to beat the Irish.
** Otherwise, I will reserve deeper judgements about this game. After all, there is still a part of me that wonders if this game tells us a few things about our team that we don’t really want to know. After all, despite all of the Panther fan bellyaching about NET rankings and other metrics, maybe the reality is that placing the Panthers around #50 is a little closer to reality than we'd like.
** Instead, I will focus on another fact which is that we still head to Miami with a chance to clinch our share of the ACC regular season title. And as frustrating as today was, that’s still a pretty darn wonderful thing regardless of our NET ranking.
** So I’ll leave with this good thought. Let's go to Florida hoping for a great outcome. Because I will really enjoy writing about that. I still have plenty of great ideas stored up after today. Really. I swear I do.
