Notre Dame, Alabama set to be a battle of star freshmen guards Blake Wesley, JD Davison

By this point in the year, Notre Dame basketball fans are intimately familiar with a certain first-year guard. Freshman Blake Wesley is a phenom, one with a skillset Irish fans are used to seeing on the opposite side of the court in Carolina blue or starting against them at Cameron Indoor Stadium instead of on their own roster.

But what you may not know is Alabama has a Blake Wesley of its own. His name is JD Davison, and Notre Dame will face him in the first round of the NCAA Tournament on Friday afternoon.

Like Wesley, Davison hails from the state in which he chose to play college basketball. The 6-3, 195-pound freshman grew up in a tiny town called Letohatchee, approximately 120 miles southeast of Tuscaloosa. He was the No. 1 point guard, No. 1 player from Alabama and No. 11 player nationally in the 2021 class per On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies. 

Davison averages 8.5 points, 4.8 points and 4.2 assists per game, but his stat line doesn’t tell the full story.

“Blake Wesley is a better player today than Davison, but Davison has crazy upside,” said Jimmy Stein of On3’s BCS Bama. “Davison’s only averaged eight points a game, he’s a big problem with turnovers, and he still might be a first round pick in this NBA Draft. He has crazy athleticism, he’s a great passer, he’s fun to watch, and when he plays great, he’s tough to beat.”

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Despite the inexperience, Davison does not shy away from the spotlight. His best game this year? It came in a 91-82 win over Gonzaga. The guard had 20 points, shot 60 percent from the floor and 66.7 percent from three-point range in Seattle. He’s a menace all over the floor. And I mean all over the floor.

“He doesn’t lead the team in rebounds, but the best rebounder on the team is JD Davison,” Stein said. “He is responsible for more great offensive rebounds than anybody because you’re kind of surprised to see him in there getting an offensive rebound and scoring a put-back.”

Turnovers a key storyline in first-round matchup

What does Notre Dame need to do to fluster Davison? Play aggressively, as Stein alluded to. Davison averages nearly three turnovers per game. As a team, Alabama turns the ball over 14.6 times per contest, which was 13th in the SEC this year.

Notre Dame head coach Mike Brey prides himself on keeping the turnovers down with his Irish teams, and this group is not an exception. The Irish are currently ranked 18th in the nation in turnovers per game at 10.2.

“The turnovers are the number one thing for Friday,” Stein said. “If Alabama loses to Notre Dame, why did they lose? Because they couldn’t hit three point shots and they turned it over too much.”

Three-point shots. The other big storyline here. Expect the threes to be flying on Friday afternoon. Alabama takes 48 percent of its shots from behind the arc, which is 12th in the nation. Interestingly, they were last in the country in three-point shooting percentage at home, which fits with the theme of mind-boggling inconsistency that plagued Alabama all season. More on that in a minute.

Notre Dame shoots fewer threes, but they are exceptional at draining them (38 percent). That’s a higher success rate than any individual Alabama player has. Both Dane Goodwin and Nate Laszewski make greater than 45 percent of the shots they take from behind the arc.

Taking the Alabama fans’ temperature

Alabama has had one of the wonkiest seasons in college basketball in recent memory. They beat Gonzaga, Baylor, Houston and Tennessee earlier this year. However, they enter Friday’s game on a three-game losing streak, and they are 9-10 since the calendar flipped to 2022. Head coach Nate Oats has even been publicly dismissive of his team’s effort at times.

“Nate is still enjoying an extended honeymoon period, in the sense that he won right away,” Stein said. “It has been rare in Alabama’s history to win the SEC regular season and the SEC tournament in the same year. He tied the all-time school record for for highest NCAA seed last year with a two seed. While they did lose in the Sweet 16, they lost in overtime to a UCLA team that made the Final Four. With Alabama’s history, it was one of the great seasons in Alabama history, and he followed that up by signing one of the great recruiting classes in Alabama history.

“So I think, in general, Nate Oats has tremendous support and popularity despite the team’s depths and despite his comments. The vast majority of Alabama fans are very supportive of Nate Oates and excited to have him. But this season’s dips in performance are certainly noticed, and it’s really more of a head-scratching thing than anything else.”

An interesting note: former Alabama head coach Avery Johnson was at the helm of the Tide program until Oats took over in March 2019. There is one player on the team who committed to Johnson, although he signed under Oats: leading scorer Jaden Shackelford.

Who will be on the call in San Diego on Friday? None other than Johnson. It’s his first time calling an Alabama game since departing Tuscaloosa nearly three years ago.

Which Tide team will take the floor in San Diego on Friday? Your guess is as good as mine. Or Stein’s. But if you want early indicators of how this game might end, keep an eye on Davison, the turnovers and the three-point shooting. These teams want to play the same style of up-tempo game, and if both the Irish and the Tide are pushing 80 or 90 points by the end, don’t be shocked.

Notre Dame-Alabama tips off at 4:15 p.m. ET on TNT. For more on the game, Blue & Gold’s Patrick Engel wrote a full preview here.