Notre Dame pushes, but can’t get past North Carolina State in road loss
Cormac Ryan promised that Notre Dame, if nothing else, wouldn’t fold under the weight of a season gone sideways. The Irish, in their captain’s words, have “no plan of going out without swinging” in their final 11 regular season games.
“That’s a fact,” Ryan said after Saturday’s home loss to Boston College.
Notre Dame did take a competitive swing at one of the ACC’s better teams on the road Tuesday. But the same flaws that have sank the Irish toward the bottom of the league prevented it from connecting on the barrel.
The Irish lost to North Carolina State 85-82, their fourth straight defeat. They’re 9-12 overall and 1-9 in ACC games at the halfway mark of the conference season. They shot 51.9 percent overall and 42.9 percent on three-pointers. The undoing was shaky ball security that produced 15 turnovers, tied for their second most this season. They attempted 14 fewer field goals than North Carolina State (16-5, 6-4 ACC), which shot 41.2 percent.
“We gave ourselves a chance,” head coach Mike Brey said. “This has been our M.O. where we get punched, we come back and figure it out, but can’t close it.”
Ryan, backing up his word, was Notre Dame’s primary assailant. He scored a team-high 19 points and made 5 of 6 three-point attempts. His triple with 4:59 left pulled the Irish within a point.
“He battled his backside off,” Brey said.
The Irish came no closer, though. Casey Morsell answered with a three-pointer on the ensuing possession, pushing the Wolfpack lead back to four. They remained within seven for the rest of the game, and Ryan missed a potential tying three with 1:20 to go. They made only one field goal, though, between Ryan’s three and a JJ Starling layup with 15 seconds left. Starling had 18 points.
A stirring close to a first half in which the Irish led by as many as seven points caved immediately out of halftime. The culprit was a familiar and frustrating sight: unforced turnovers and non-execution moments where old guys didn’t play old. Notre Dame, as a result, gave away its 42-39 halftime lead in 50 seconds.
The Irish were poised to stretch that advantage to five on their first possession when guard Trey Wertz caught a half-court pass from guard Marcus Hammond under the basket, seemingly free for an easy layup. But he hesitated before going up, allowing North Carolina State guard Terquavion Smith to hustle over and strip the ball. Smith found Morsell for a tying three nine seconds later. The Wolfpack went ahead when Hammond’s missed jumper created a fast-break layup for forward Ernest Ross.
Ryan gave Notre Dame a two-point lead on a jumper with 17:34 left, but two more turnovers made it short-lived. The second was a Wertz pass right to Smith when he tried to save a loose ball. Smith took the gift and dished to Morsell for a layup, putting North Carolina State up 49-46. The Irish’s deficit swelled to 9 points before they whittled it back down to two-possession territory for nearly all the final 11 minutes.
Ryan’s guarantee felt hollow before 10 minutes had passed. North Carolina State put together a 17-2 run to take an 11-point lead with 10:43 left in the first half. Signs of life from the Irish during it were absent. The Wolfpack erased an early one-point deficit with a five-point possession, a product of a foul on a three-pointer, an offensive rebound on a free throw and kick-out pass for a three. Forward Nate Laszewski sat for the final 11 minutes after he committed three fouls in seven minutes.
A blowout seemed to be brewing.
Notre Dame, though, returned with a haymaker of its own. The Irish mounted a 26-8 run in response to that 11-point hole to take a 40-33 lead with 1:22 to go before halftime. Their switch to a 2-3 zone defense threw North Carolina State off-balance. They made 5 of 11 attempts from three-point range.
Freshman forward Ven-Allen Lubin played 14 first-half minutes because of Laszewski’s foul trouble, totaling 6 points, 4 rebounds and 2 blocks. He finished the game with 10 points in 22 minutes, both season highs.
“He gave us a defensive presence back there,” Brey said. “He was a big target we could find on rolls. He really rebounded well. I’ve been wanting to get him in there more, but he has been in and out with this [ankle] injury. The foul trouble to Nate presented it, but moving forward, we’d like to play them together some and see if that can help us.”
