On Saturday afternoon, Notre Dame men’s basketball played host to rival Boston College at Purcell Pavilion in their 20th game of the season. In a lot of ways, though, it felt like a repeat of many of the Irish’s previous games this year.
“I think Groundhog Day is in February,” Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry said after the game. “But for us, Groundhog Day has been every single time we’ve had a game.”
Just as they have several times this year, Notre Dame dropped a hard-fought nailbiter, falling to 7-13 and 2-7 in ACC play after the 61-58 defeat. It certainly wasn’t for a lack of effort or will to win. The Irish battled for 40 minutes, at times showing glimpses of being a team that could be among the best in the conference.
“Nobody leaves anything [in] their tank, every time we step on the court to practice, to play, anything like that. That’s what keeps us going, is hard work,” junior guard JR Konieczny said. “I feel like everybody plays their heart out every single game, so I have nothing to say about our effort, honestly. I think everybody went out there [today] and competed as hard as they could.”
But as has been the story for much of the season, and especially in the midst of their current four-game losing streak, those positive stretches — the ones that Shrewsberry envisions seeing last for entire games — were cut short by the same old miscues. The team suffered through long periods of offensive stagnancy, costly turnovers at key moments and an inability to close out close games.
“You just got to find a way to not make the same mistakes every game, got to find a way to do some things that lead to winning — do more things that lead to winning, [because] we’re doing some things that are,” Shrewsberry said. “Then we won’t have this feeling anymore.”
On the heels of last Wednesday’s loss against Miami that saw the Irish offense come out of the gates red-hot with 10 points in the first four minutes, Notre Dame struggled to find its rhythm early on Saturday.
Konieczny had Purcell Pavilion rocking in the game’s opening minute when he recorded a steal on Boston College’s first possession before drilling a three-pointer on the other end for the first points of the game. But the Irish would add just two more points to their tally over the ensuing 10 minutes as the Eagles slowly worked their way to an 11-5 advantage. That stretch included four Notre Dame turnovers, and the team would finish with 13 on the afternoon.
“Very frustrating. That’s one of the things that’s holding us back,” Shrewsberry said about his team’s turnover issues. “You just can’t keep turning the ball over, can’t keep making mistakes that are just holding us back.”
With the Irish desperately needing a basket after a scoring drought that lasted nearly seven minutes, it was Konieczny who again provided the spark. Midway through the first, he drew a foul on a three-point attempt and sank all three free throws to cut the deficit in half. He erased it entirely less than a minute later with his second three of the game. Finally, he followed up his own missed three-pointer and finished at the rim to cap off a personal 8-0 run and put the Irish back ahead 13-11.
“I just had open shots so I was just taking [them], I was trying to be a little more aggressive today,” Konieczny said about his early scoring burst. “I was just trying to do whatever I could to get my team a little momentum. [My teammates], they found me [when I was open], so hats off to these guys for doing that, first of all.”
The Irish would continue to ride that wave to a 15-5 run that culminated with freshman guard Markus Burton driving and kicking to a wide open freshman guard Logan Imes for a three-pointer that put Notre Dame ahead 20-16 with less than five minutes remaining in the half.
Boston College would answer with a pair of quick scores to tie the game before Irish senior forward Matt Zona and the Eagles’ Chas Kelley III traded a pair of threes to send the teams into the locker rooms deadlocked at 23-23.
The second period got off to a much quicker start than the first, with both sides exchanging baskets at a quick pace. With just over 13 minutes remaining, Boston College’s Mason Madsen broke a 32-32 tie with a three-pointer that gave the Eagles a lead that they would ultimately retain until the final buzzer sounded, despite that advantage never stretching beyond seven points.
At times in the first half, it felt like Konieczny was the only Irish player who could consistently find the basket. In the second, Notre Dame again had a single player handling most of the shot-making, only this time it was Braeden Shrewsberry, who caught fire after being held scoreless during the opening half.
The sharpshooting freshman guard connected on four three-pointers in the half en route to 14 points, and his marksmanship prevented the Eagles from ever pulling away down the stretch. During one frenetic sequence midway through the period, Shrewsberry and Boston College’s Claudell Harris Jr. made four long jump shots on four consecutive possessions for 11 total points in less than a minute.
With under eight minutes to play, a Shrewsberry three brought the Irish back within three points. From there, the two sides continued trading scores, with Notre Dame unable to get the stop needed to tie the game or regain the lead but keeping things close by virtue of hitting six consecutive free throws, an area in which the team has struggled at times this year.
In the final two minutes, Burton scored in the paint to cut the Eagles’ lead to 57-55. He finished with a game-high seven assists and was one of three Irish players to score in double figures, along with Konieczny and Shrewsberry. Konieczny had a chance to tie the score with less than a minute to play but could not finish at the rim, and Boston College seemed to put things away with four straight points that brought their lead back to six.
But Shrewsberry made a three-pointer with just over one second remaining, and Burton forced a turnover on the ensuing inbounds pass, suddenly giving the Irish a second life and a chance to shockingly force overtime. It was not to be, though, as Notre Dame’s game-tying three-point attempt at the buzzer was off the mark, sealing the final score at 61-58 and handing the Irish their fourth straight ACC loss after a promising 2-3 start in conference play.
For Coach Shrewsberry, the greatest frustration from the losing streak has come from how competitive the Irish have been in nearly every game, only to be unable to close out wins in the final minutes.
“You should be growing toward [knowing how to win], probably,” Shrewsberry said. “After 20 games, I guess you’re still a freshman or you’re still a sophomore, but you’re getting closer to being a sophomore and a junior. We’ve been in these situations a lot and we’re just not closing it the right way.”
Conversely, the close nature of their losses is also what has kept him and the team focused and motivated every day, understanding that they’re an extremely young and inexperienced group that has competed very well against strong ACC teams, and believing that — at some point — they’ll get over the hump and begin turning those losses into wins.
“It’s right there for you. If we were getting blown out every game, then that would be a problem getting focused. But it’s like, ‘Man, if I change one or two things, we’re probably winning.’ So there is hope. You can see hope, you can see progress,” Shrewsberry said. “I keep telling them, ‘It’s there for you. Whenever you want to do it, you can get a win. All these opportunities are there for you.’ Now it’s just, sometimes you’ve got to reach out and take it.”
Until that moment comes, the Irish will continue to be left feeling like it’s Groundhog Day. Regardless, they’ll keep working hard and trusting their process until that moment when everything clicks and they can break out of this cycle of last-second losses.
“We got to keep learning, we got to keep teaching,” Shrewsberry said. “We can’t get discouraged as a staff, as players, as anybody that’s involved with our group. We can’t get tired of teaching until we get it.”
With a pair of home games now behind them, the Irish will kick off a three-game road stretch on Wednesday night at 7 p.m. against Virginia, a team that Notre Dame defeated earlier in the year.
