What to know about Notre Dame men's basketball vs. Virginia Tech
Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry played against Virginia Tech last season, when he was at Penn State. It didn’t go well for the Nittany Lions, who lost a tough, low-scoring battle 61-59.
Given who this Irish men’s basketball team has proved to be, expecting a similar game would be reasonable.
“They’re just old,” Shrewsberry said. “They run their stuff. They’re really good at that. We have to be really disciplined. They test your discipline, because they run a lot of sets but then they’ll throw some counters in off of those sets that you don’t know is coming.”
Many of the Virginia Tech’s key players returned, coming off a season that ended in the first round of the NIT. Junior guard Sean Pedulla, senior guard Hunter Cattoor and senior center Lynn Kidd are all guys Shrewsberry remembers seeing on film. Even though the Hokies have a middling record, their experience should still pose a challenge for a young Notre Dame team.
Here’s everything you need to know about the matchup.
Notre Dame vs. Virginia Tech game information
- Teams: Notre Dame (7-16, 2-10 ACC) at Virginia Tech (13-9, 5-6 Atlantic Coast Conference)
- Date: Saturday, Feb. 10
- Location: Purcell Pavilion in South Bend
- Time: 6 p.m. ET
- Television: The CW
- TV announcers: Ryan Burr (play-by-play), Jordan Cornette (analyst; played at Notre Dame from 2001-05)
- Radio: 960 WSBT-AM in South Bend
- Radio announcer: Tony Simeone
Matchup notables
• Pedulla is Virginia Tech’s leading scorer, putting up 15.8 points per game. Cattoor (14.0) and Kidd (13.5) are not far behind, and each of them bring at least one other key skill to the table.
• Cattoor makes 43.3 percent of his 3-pointers this season, but even that doesn’t tell the full story. Since the turn of the new year, he is a whopping 23-for-43 from beyond the arc, good for 53.5 percent.
• Pedulla leads the team in assists at 4.6 per game, while Kidd leads in rebounds at 6.6. The 6-foot-10 Kidd also isn’t someone Notre Dame can just foul and get away with it; he’s an 88.6 percent free-throw shooter.
• The Hokies hit 79.1 percent of their free throws as a team, with Kidd, Cattoor (88.3 percent) and sophomore guard MJ Collins (90.5, albeit on just 1.1 attempts per game) leading the way. That’s the second-best mark in the ACC, just behind Wake Forest at 80.2 percent.
• Virginia Tech likes to hedge screens on defense, which Shrewsberry sees as a chance to improve Notre Dame’s struggling ball movement.
“They’re gonna put two people on the ball every single possession you come off the pick-and-roll,” Shrewsberry said. “Getting it out of my hands, and now, we should get things flowing. We should get things rolling. This is a game where you can get assists.”
