Road Woes

Notre Dame fell at the hands of the Georgetown Hoyas Saturday by a score of 84 - 65. Giving a new feel to the term "cold," the Irish shot just above 30% from the floor and only connected on 7 of their 25 three point attempts. 7'2" center Roy Hibbert made the game extremely difficult for Harangody; the sophomore fouled out with 13 points, but was only 3 of 13 from the field.

It wasn't until sometime in the second half that Notre Dame adjusted its defense on Hibbert, who scored a game high 21 points with an efficient 7 for 11 shooting effort. Originally, the Irish let him get the ball and relied on help crashing down from the top of the key, but Hibbert's tall frame and finesse game continued to dominate over the small Irish defense. In the second half, Brey decided to start "fronting" Hibbert a little, attempting to prevent him from touching the ball. This seemed to slightly throw Georgetown out of rhythm, but at that point the game was almost out of reach; it's hard to come back when you can't score...

Notre Dame may have shot poorly, but it was in a large part to the stifling defense played by the Hoyas. Showing why they are #6 in the country, they dominated by shutting down Kyle McAlarney and Harangody. Up to this point in the season (and it has been apparent when looking at the box scores), Notre Dame's offense has run largely through those two players, so it was a big problem when they were taken out of the game. Even though the starters weren't accomplishing much and the Irish were down 20, however, Brey didn't sub any freshmen in until there was less than a minute in the game. Abromaitis hit two free throws in the garbage time, but it is my opinion that the team missed another great opportunity to develop its young players.

For my final two cents, I'd like to point out the one bright spot in the loss: the play of sophomore guard Jonathan Peoples. This player gets some flak from the fan base because he doesn't look quite as polished in his ball handling or shooting as the players around him, but the People's Court was in session Saturday, dropping 12 points (5/6 shooting) in only 11 minutes of play. At one point, Peoples showed off his pumps skills by rebounding a K-Mac missed 3 and slamming it home with one hand; after losing Russell Carter, it was fun to see a powerful putback again. Hopefully he'll learn to build off of this game and give the Irish another scoring threat.