Micah Shrewsberry apologizes for not fouling up by 3 late vs. North Carolina

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish lost a heartbreaking game to the North Carolina Tar Heels on Saturday night, with a last minute shot swinging the game in the Tar Heels’ favor.

Following the game, Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry blamed himself for the loss. In particular, he admitted that not fouling while Notre Dame was up by three points late in the game was the decision that proved costly.

“Credit to North Carolina for coming through with the win,” Micah Shrewsberry said. “Credit to our guys for playing really hard and competing and doing what they needed to do to win. I told them I let them down at the end and I apologized to them.” 

In the closing seconds of the game, Notre Dame was defending a three-point lead. However, with 4.8 seconds, North Carolina was able to hit a three-point shot and draw a foul on Matt Allocco to ultimately win the game.

“I apologize to all the Notre Dame fans that came and stuck with us. I’ll get better from this. I’ll grow from this…should’ve fouled. You get in that situation, you foul every single time up three. 14, almost 15 seconds left, we were gonna wait a little bit,” Shrewsberry said. “Then, it got away from us. They ran the pistol, they lost the ball, they swung it back. By that time, you can’t go and foul. We should have done it earlier. Maybe we should’ve called a timeout to set that up, since we had two left or used the first, which wouldn’t have put them in the bonus, then call the timeout afterwards but you always foul up three and they did everything they need to do to put themselves in position.”

Teams will foul when winning by three points late in games to try and force their opponents to shoot two free throws and change possession. That, in turn, prevents trying to tie the game with a three-point attempt.

Following the game, several Notre Dame players wore their emotions on their sleeves. That included Markus Burton, who was visibly emotional and Micah Shrewsberry was seen comforting.

“Told him it’s not on him, it’s on me. I lost this game. It’s not him. He put us in position to win. That’s it. He’s going to be better. He’s going to keep growing,” Shrewsberry said. “These are tough. His body is going to be sore tomorrow. He’s gotta keep doing what he needs to do so he’s ready for next week. We’ve got a bunch of fighters, man, a bunch of fighters. When we compete and play we can play with anybody. We can and there’s nobody else I’d rather rock with than this group.”

Notre Dame is going to look to bounce back on Wednesday with another ACC game. This one is on the road against NC State.