Another Cass Prosper double-double isn't enough for Notre Dame in loss at Georgia Tech

The heart of college basketball season is coming quick if we aren’t in the thick of it already. With it arrive aggravating afternoons and early evenings like the one Notre Dame immersed itself in at Georgia Tech on New Year’s Day.

So much about the Fighting Irish’s performance felt sloppy and was in need of tidying up. Cassandre Prosper provided a cleansing — temporarily — but what she did laying down a line of 19 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists still wasn’t enough for a Notre Dame road win.

The Fighting Irish frustratingly fell to Georgia Tech, 95-90, in overtime.

Notre Dame led 61-53. And 63-55. And 65-57. And 70-62. And 74-66. Five eight-point leads, the last of which was held until the midway point of the fourth quarter. And yet, the Irish still melted down and gave the game away to a Yellow Jackets team that is now just 6-9 overall and 1-2 in ACC play.

It was a matchup No. 18 Notre Dame (10-3, 2-1) had an obvious edge in on paper. But the game is played on a hard court, and it’s preferably played with more than six players. Still down KK Bransford because of her knee injury, the Irish literally did not have enough manpower to avoid the upset. Their rotation of half a dozen players caught up to them in a 45-minute game that was far more helter-skelter than orderly. A couple extra bodies could’ve been good for slightly less chaos, and at least one more Notre Dame point than Georgia Tech finished with.

We’ll never know.

Still, had Notre Dame protected the ball better, it probably would have won in regulation anyway. A string of final-frame turnovers capitalized on by the Yellow Jackets allowed them to keep clawing back. The Irish even turned the ball over via a shot clock violation with 14 seconds left. They needed to stop Georgia Tech in the final moments to even get to OT.

How’d they go from having the game decently in control to completely beyond it? It really does all go back to the current situation in terms of who’s playing and who isn’t.

Rebounding and defense without fouling in a short rotation remain issues

Georgia Tech increased its scoring total in every quarter, from 16 in the first, 17 in the second, 20 in the third and 27 in the fourth. That’s a direct byproduct of Prosper and Hannah Hidalgo, the team’s best defensive players, accumulating fouls as the game goes on. When they get hit with personals, they get less aggressive defensively, and the opponent is enabled to score more. It’s simple cause and effect.

Need more evidence? Hidalgo had 6 steals in the first 12 minutes of the game. She had 2 in the final 33.

Prosper can’t go all-out for rebounds when she’s in foul trouble as well. She had 4 offensive boards in the first half and finished the game with … 4. She didn’t get any when possessions were most at a premium.

Georgia Tech out-rebounded Notre Dame, 42-36. That’s not the split you’d like to see from the Irish in a game against a team that would have had twice as many losses as wins if they lost Thursday, but it’s the Irish’s reality nonetheless. They’ve been out-rebounded in three of the last four games. It’s going to catch up to ’em in an upcoming stretch of consecutive games against No. 16 North Carolina, No. 13 Louisville and No. 1 UConn unless something is rectified.

Issue is, what’s the solution? There isn’t an emergency board-getter getting added to the roster midseason.

Among Notre Dame’s six players who saw the floor, Hidalgo — all 5-foot-6 of her — is the second-leading rebounder behind Prosper. The Irish’s front court duo of Malaya Cowles and Gisela Sanchez, both 6-4, chipped in decently vs. Georgia Tech with 13 rebounds between the pair, but they’re not always good for that. They both went into the game averaging 5.3 rebounds per game.

When Notre Dame’s lead dwindled to two with 4:10 remaining, the Irish called timeout and Sanchez went to the bench. Prosper came back in with four fouls. Minor example of Sanchez’s overall expendability despite being a season-long regular in Notre Dame’s starting lineup.

If Georgia Tech could nearly exploit this six-player Notre Dame squad, the better teams in the ACC will do so to an even greater extent.

Prosper excels again, even in defeat

The Yellow Jackets were owning the boards early, out-rebounding the Irish by five in the second quarter. Prosper, Notre Dame’s leading rebounder, flipped the script. For at least a little while, she had Notre Dame owning the boards, and the game titled in the Irish’s favor as a result. Had they won, her fourth double-double in the last five games would’ve been a big reason why.

Prosper is Notre Dame’s No. 1 spark plug not named Hannah Hidalgo. Rebounding. Defense. Scoring. She does a little bit of everything. A lot of everything, actually.

The Irish were stuck in a slog Hidalgo, who had 26 points, 10 assists and 8 steals on a voluminous shooting night (10 of 25), wasn’t going to pull them out of on her own. That’s when Prosper did what she does and gave Notre Dame the get-over-the-hump contributions that weren’t just needed. They were necessary for the purposes of staying within reach of a victory. Prosper delivered, even if victory wasn’t attained.

Vanessa de Jesus’ second-half spurt comes in handy

If it was Prosper who steadied Notre Dame’s ship in the first half and enabled the Irish to hold a three-point halftime lead in a game it trailed by as many as half a dozen points and for just over nine minutes of game time, it was Vanessa de Jesus who caught fire and gave the Irish a more comfortable cushion early in the third quarter.

De Jesus scored eight consecutive points for Notre Dame in the first half of the third frame, a pair of three-pointers sandwiched around a midrange jumpers. She took Notre Dame’s lead from three to 11 in the process. Fellow Irish guard Iyana Moore knocked down a three of her own to extend the advantage to 14.

Georgia Tech obviously came back to win, but the shotmaking out of the break was only made more important by way of that. Without de Jesus, without Moore — who made a three in the final seconds of the third, too — who knows which different direction the game could’ve gone. Notre Dame might’ve been the team needing a fourth quarter comeback.

The game was up for grabs through 20 minutes. De Jesus and Moore went and momentarily grabbed it in a game in which every point proved to be vital. It just would have hit a lot differently and much more positively had their sharpshooting and 27 combined points been in a winning effort.

BOX SCORE: Georgia Tech 95, Notre Dame 90 (OT)