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The Notre Dame Fighting Irish played their final home game of the season tonight with the Stanford Cardinal in town. These two teams already met earlier this year, and the less said about that, the better. There was pretty much no way we’d see Stanford go 4-for-30 from the three point line this time, so the Irish would have to find a way to score against a defense they’d struggled against. They succeeded in that regard, but weren’t able to get enough stops to turn that offense into a sustainable run. Stanford grabbed a late first-half lead and never looked back. Then again, they never looked forward either. The game just more or less stayed in park for the final 20 minutes, which made the flurry of offense from both teams much less exciting than it should have been.
In the early going, the Irish were able to get some scoring from Brady Koehler, who shook off getting benched after five poor minutes against N.C. State. He drilled a corner three and had a nifty and-one by using his 6’10” frame to get a difficult shot to fall on a drive down the lane. Stanford, too was in a little bit more of an offensive groove with Markus Burton and Kebba Njie no longer around. The likes of Koehler and Ryder Frost are just not equipped to be stoppers at this point in their career, and Stanford was getting to the basket against them with ease.
Fortunately, Jalen Haralson picked up where he left off against N.C. State, using his physicality to bully smaller players for post buckets and trips to the free throw line. The Irish were generally living by attacking the basket, as Koehler’s three was the only one the Irish found in the first ten minutes. Stanford, meanwhile, was already 75 percent of the way to their three-pointer total from the previous matchup, as they’d knocked down three, including a 2-for-2 showing from Jeremy Dent-Smith. The score was 23-21 at the halfway mark of the first half, which to that point had featured eight lead changes. Both teams were on pace to break 80 after neither managed to break 50 in December.
Haralson kept right on going drawing fouls, which put the Irish into the bonus with just under nine minutes left in the half. Helping things further was Braeden Shrewsberry, who woke up to score a quick eight points in just a couple minutes. However, the Irish were struggling to contain Stanford’s three point shooters, particularly leading scorer Ebuka Okorie. A big key to the previous Irish win was aggressive doubling to help out Logan Imes guarding Okorie, which resulted in a mere seven points for the freshman phenom. That wouldn’t be the case tonight, as he hit a couple big triples within a flurry of them from the Cardinal to put Stanford up 38-28. Micah Shrewsberry saw him getting too much daylight and had to call timeout at the 6:43 mark.
The pace of the game stayed quick, with both teams opting to play a fun-and-gun style with few stoppages. That benefitted Cole Certa, who found himself his first couple buckets of the game to cut into the Stanford lead. The game didn’t feature a whistle until the game stopped at the 1:50 mark for the under-4 timeout on aweird traveling violation on Dent-Smith. The Irish offense remained strong, but Stanford was able to maintain their lead on the strength of 8-for-13 three-point shooting, a couple times exploiting the double-teams on Okorie to find an open shooter. The teams went to the locker room with Stanford ahead 45-37.
Stanford opened the second half with center AJ Rohosy grabbing the Cardinal’s first offensive rebound of the game (!) and getting a put-back, but Certa quickly hit back with a three. The teams more or less traded baskets from a variety of sources for the first six minutes of the half, which featured a considerably slower pace than late in the first half. It would be Stanford that would blink first. Carson Towt found himself free for a dunk, and after the Cardinal failed to capitalize on the other end a couple times, Garrett Sundra won a fierce battle for a loose ball. Towt drove to the hoop on the other end and made a nice kick-out to Certa, whose three-pointer cut the lead to 55-51, eliciting a timeout from Stanford with 11:56 to play.
Unfortunately, like most others in this game, the burst was short-lived and capped at five points. A killer Irish possession in which Okorie was able to come out of a scrum with a loose ball for a coast-to-coast and-one was followed by Jalen Thompson making a tough bucket down low while getting fouled by Certa, who emerged with a bloody nose for his trouble. Stanford had run the lead back to ten, and the Irish were still searching for answers to permanently cut the deficit.
Haralson started to get a little careless with the ball in this stretch, as he began to commit turnovers on questionable pass attempts and threw up a bad brick in the post when his man beat him to his spot. Fortunately, the Irish had a few successful defensive possessions to ease the blow in this stretch, and when Shrewsberry made a tough step-back three, it cut the lead to six. However, before the under-8 timeout, Dent-Smith put down a high-arcing triple, bringing him to 4-for-4 for the game. The clock kept changing, but the game situation stayed the same.
It took until the last four minutes for the Irish to make what constitutes a “run” in the context of this game. Logan Imes dropped in a three just before the under-four timeout, and Haralson dropped the deficit to five on a couple bully-ball-induced free throws. The Irish managed to force an inspired shot-clock violation before Okorie could attempt a ridiculous floater (which actually went in after the horn!), which set the stage for Haralson to go downhill for yet another pair of free throws. The Irish dropped the lead to three with two minutes to play.
Stanford would get three back when all the attention on Okorie led to a more-or-less conceded three point attempt by the seldom-used Thompson, which he managed to knock down. Haralson would get two back in no time flat by taking it coast-to-coast, but the clock was ticking. The Cardinal went to Aidan Cammann in the post against Haralson, who fouled him going up. Cammann would make 1-of-2, which wasn’t enough to hold serve, because Haralson went right back to forcing the issue with the Cardinal in the post and being pure at the free throw line. Stanford led 79-76 with 52 seconds to play.
The Irish once again blitzed Okorie on a high ball screen. However, coach Kyle Smith was more than wise to this game by this point and coming out of the timeout, chose Dent-Smith as the player to set it. With Certa, Dent-Smith’s man, instructed to double on the screen, the dangerous Dent-Smith was left wide open for his fifth three of the night, and Certa was unable to recover. I’m not sure why Certa was on the floor coming out of the Stanford timeout. Micah Shrewsberry had two timeouts remaining and Certa had been a consistent issue on defense all game.
That three turned out to be all she wrote, as the Irish failed to connect on two three point attempts on their ensuing possession. This was Stanford’s first ever win against Notre Dame in six attempts. For those of you watching the furious battle for the last slot in the ACC tournament, Florida State took care of business on the road against Pittsburgh tonight, so for the Irish to overtake the Panthers, it will take a win on the road against Boston College and a loss by Pittsburgh against Syracuse this weekend.
Bullet Points
- The late-season free throw shooting surge for the Irish continues. Jalen Haralson in particular has really stepped it up in that department. He went 13-for-15 from the line tonight, making three more than Stanford made as a team. Koehler (3-for-3), Certa (6-for-6), and Sundra (2-for-2) were perfect.
- It was a tough game for Carson Towt. He managed to only collect three rebounds, and while he had three assists, he did have a couple turnovers trying to thread the needle too tightly on passes.
- Okorie finished with 24 points, but his seven assists were killer, because they were typically kick-outs to whomever the Irish were playing off of for help defense, and the Stanford shooters were up to the task.
- Sir Mohammed played ten minutes and outside of kicking the ball out to a wide-open Imes one time, did nothing of use.