Notre Dame suffered a heartbreaking loss Saturday afternoon against the Pittsburgh Panthers, its sixth loss in the past seven games. In their most recent contest, the Irish beat Georgia Tech decisively despite missing their star freshman guard Jalen Haralson, who is out with an ankle injury. The matchup in Pittsburgh should have been another winnable game, as Pitt came into the afternoon 2-11 in the ACC, one of just three teams performing worse in conference play than Notre Dame itself. Both teams find themselves battling uphill just to grab a bid to the ACC Tournament.
The first half was hard to watch for fans of quality offense. Junior guard Braeden Shrewsberry made a 3-pointer for Notre Dame in the first possession of the game, which might have seemed promising for the Irish, who rely heavily on long-range shooting. Indeed, Notre Dame shot a remarkable 50% from beyond the arc in its win against Georgia Tech, with sophomore guard Cole Certa alone knocking down seven threes. However, the shooting was not so successful as the Pitt game continued to get underway. Notre Dame missed all of its next six 3-point attempts and only managed to take a 5-3 lead into the under-16 media timeout thanks to a layup from junior guard Logan Imes, who recently rejoined the starting lineup in the absence of Haralson, and early turnovers by the Pitt offense.
A 3-pointer from Pitt’s Roman Siulepa gave the Panthers their first taste of the lead. Before the next media timeout, Siulepa made another three, and Pitt’s sophomore sharpshooter Nojus Indrusaitis added one of his own. Layups on opposite sides of the floor from Notre Dame’s sophomore forward Garrett Sundra and Pitt’s Omari Witherspoon meant Notre Dame was trailing 11-7 going into the timeout. Having now missed its last eight attempts from deep, the Irish offense needed to figure out how to create higher-quality shots for itself. Notre Dame had committed only one turnover but generally appeared to lack rhythm and intensity. Pitt, on the other hand, had committed five turnovers by this point, but even that is more accurately considered a discredit to the Pitt offense rather than a credit to the Notre Dame defense. Both of these bottom-of-the-ACC teams looked sloppy and unimpressive through the first eight minutes of play.
As the first half wore on, Notre Dame found slightly more success attacking the rim, due in part to a few driving layups from sophomore guard Sir Mohammed, who checked into the game at the under-12. Though sometimes a little inconsistent, Mohammed is an energetic player who can often give the Irish a spark from the bench.
Overall, though, Notre Dame’s offense continued to struggle for several minutes, and Pitt was not looking much better. Notably, Notre Dame still had no luck from 3-point range, while Barry Dunning Jr. was able to drain one for Pitt.
Freshman guard Ryder Frost entered the game on a mission to change that. One of Mohammed’s layups combined with a three from Frost and then a layup from Imes constituted a 7-0 run by Notre Dame. Pitt then answered with a 6-0 run of its own.
With just 2:50 remaining in the first half, Certa finally contributed to the scoring column, slicing through the Panther defense and finishing a mid-range jumper. Coming off his career-high 37 points at Georgia Tech and averaging 21.7 in the first four contests of February, Notre Dame would need him to come alive if they were to have a chance in this one, especially in order to answer Pitt’s 3-point shooting. Similarly strange was that graduate forward Carson Towt too had yet to add a point for the Irish, nor had Pitt’s key forward Cameron Corhen. Shrewsberry had also been silent since the very first play of the game. Then again, scoring was hard to come by overall in this half.
Two more missed threes from Imes and Certa, respectively, knocked the Irish’s 3-point shooting rate down to just 2-18. Pitt, on the other hand, was a solid 5-14 from deep.
By the time a dunk from Notre Dame closed out the first-half action, the score was a meager 23-20, with the Irish trailing. Clearly, Notre Dame would need to spend halftime adjusting its offensive strategy to rely less on the three and get points on the board.
Coming out of the half, Pitt seemed to pick up where it left off in terms of shooting, as Siulepa nailed another three. Notre Dame’s first point came in the form of a Towt free throw, which was slightly encouraging considering the last time Towt made a foul shot was Jan. 24. It also signaled that it was time for both teams’ big men to step up and impact the game.
Though Towt would wind up adding seven points for the Irish, his real impact would come, as one might expect from Towt, in the form of rebounding. He grabbed 13 rebounds throughout the contest, eight coming in the second, and an incredible six of those eight being offensive. Giving Notre Dame’s offense as many chances as it could get would be critical, as it needed as many scoring opportunities as it could get to compensate for the first half.
An Imes 3-pointer and a Towt layup were met by four quick points from Corhen and threes from Witherspoon and Siulepa, until Notre Dame was looking at its first double-digit deficit of the game. By the under-16, Pitt had scored on every one of its early second-half possessions. Indeed, it looked during that stretch like the Notre Dame defense was becoming just as concerning as the offense.
Then, the Irish finally found something of a rhythm. Imes came up with two critical steals to help slow the Panthers’ offensive momentum. As a team, Notre Dame’s defensive rebounding looked better than it had in the first half. Shrewsberry finally made a three, his first points since the opening possession. Frost and, at long last, Certa also hit shots from deep. The Irish were looking to shoot their way back into a game they originally looked to have shot themselves out of. Indrusaitis was shooting just well enough on the other end to keep Notre Dame at bay for a while, but by the 7:30 mark, five consecutive points from Mohammed pushed Notre Dame over the edge to claim its first lead of the half.
Pitt answered that brief push from the Irish with a 17-5 run in the next six minutes. One aspect of the run was that, despite how well Notre Dame had been keeping Pitt off the offensive glass for much of the second half, Pitt did grab a few offensive rebounds during this stretch. Those second-chance looks were opportunities that Notre Dame could not afford to provide to a team shooting as well as the Panthers.
With just 90 seconds left in play, the Irish were staring down another 11-point gap to overcome. The game was not yet over, though, and those wondering when Certa was bound to come to life were about to have their answer. Certa singlehandedly scored five points in 13 seconds to keep hope alive for the Irish. Frost, the lone Notre Dame player shooting remarkably well, nailed another three before Siulepa sought to slam the door on the Irish for good with a dunk.
Unwilling to give up, Certa quickly racked up another six points, making that 11 in the final two minutes from someone who only added five points through the opening 38 minutes. Against all odds, Notre Dame had cut this to a one-possession game. However, as the clock ran down, it proved to be just too little too late as the Irish were forced to play the fouling game and take some desperate shots on offense. Pitt won 73-68.
Unfortunately, staging a second-half comeback only to fail in the end has become somewhat of a signature of the 2025-26 Notre Dame men’s basketball squad, but to lose this one to Pitt was particularly crushing as it knocked them back out of the ACC Tournament bracket. They will face their toughest matchup of the season at home on Tuesday against Duke, who will come into South Bend riding an incredible win over top-ranked Michigan, before rounding out their regular season against NC State, Stanford and Boston College.
