Irish Tame Wildcats

I couldn't tell if it was inserting Hillesland in the starting lineup or if Brey put something in the water, but the Irish for the first time this season were able to establish a commanding rhythm on the road, shooting 50% from the floor and 43% from beyond the arc while taking down Villanova in the Wachovia Center.
The game started off fairly sloppily; Nova players especially seemed to have trouble handling the ball as they threw it away several times in the first half, and the Irish capitalized, jumping out to a quick lead that they held for almost the entire contest. K-Mac (30 pts) was soaking wet, at times pulling up 2 feet outside of the NBA 3-point line to stroke down 3's, and it seemed like all of Harangody's (25 pts 10 boards) points came from converting his own 3-point plays.

Mike Brey decided to start Zach Hillesland instead of Ryan Ayers, and it brought out the best in both of them. Ayers had 10 points and 5 rebounds; Hillesland only had 2 points, but they came on a fantastic putback dunk. Peoples also contributed, adding 2 points and playing some good defense. Brey finally got Nash into a Big East game, but it was only for 3 seconds at the end of the first half.

As the game winded down to the last 3 minutes and the Irish began to run the clock, things began to get sloppy, and Notre Dame surrendered some easy points and had some ugly turnovers that shouldn't have happened. However, the bottom line is that previously 18th ranked Villanova was handed its second Big East loss of the week while ND moved to 4-2 in conference play, putting them in a tie for second place.

Hat's off to the Irish, and hopefully they can continue to have good sex in the Big East.

Video compliments of withleather.com