Mike Brey says Notre Dame playing with small margin of error this season

Now 10-13 overall and 2-10 in ACC play, it’s been a rough go for Notre Dame this season. Head coach Mike Brey knows just how thin the margin of error is, too.

“Very,” he said after the Fighting Irish’s loss to Wake Forest on Saturday.

Notre Dame has now lost five of its last six games entering Wednesday’s game against Georgia Tech. Considering the defense that worked against Louisville didn’t have the same success against Wake Forest, Brey said the ACC schedule isn’t going to get any easier as the conference tournament approaches.

“We play some zone, we play some matchup,” Brey said. “That helped us last Saturday. Not so much today. It’s really fragile for us. Actually, in the two games we’ve won in the league, the other team helped us a little bit. These guys aren’t going to help you. They were flowing today.

“We’ll go to Atlanta and keep on playing. You’d love to see if you could get a little momentum before you go to Greensboro, but it’s a group that has ownership of themselves. They come in and keep trying. We keep trying to help them, and we’ll continue to do that.”

Mike Brey provides injury updates on freshmen Dom Campbell, Ven-Allen Lubin

Notre Dame went into Saturday’s game against Wake Forest shorthanded due to injuries. Dom Campbell missed his second straight matchup while Ven-Allen Lubin was out for the third consecutive game — and Mike Brey had updates on both afterward.

Campbell has been dealing with Achilles tendon injuries in both legs, Brey said, and it started bothering him again Friday. That’s why the program decided to be careful with it and hold him out of Saturday’s game.

“Yesterday, about halfway through practice, just started flaring up,” Brey said. “It’s been an issue with both Achilles tendons. One is really swollen, and we want to be really safe because we don’t want a rupture. Doc looked at it last night after practice, so that’s probably two weeks.”

As for Lubin, he suffered an injury against Boston College but played against NC State. However, he “tweaked” the injury in that game, Brey said at the time, and hasn’t seen the court since. It’s also unclear when Lubin will come back, which is why Brey is leaning on players such as Matt Zona.

“Ven, who knows?” Brey said of a timeline for Lubin’s return. “At this point, Matt Zona, I love you. We’re going to play you. Get on in there and play. We’ll see where we are Monday with Ven.”