Why Notre Dame men’s basketball is at crucial point in season with Michigan State in town

With all due respect to Radford and Lipscomb, and those two certainly commanded it, Notre Dame’s quartet of grad student linchpins ran it back for one more year to play games like Wednesday’s.

ACC/Big Ten Challenge. Big ESPN, not ESPN+. A (hopefully) big student section. Ranked opponent with one takedown of a top-10 team already on its ledger (Kentucky) and a near-miss at another (Gonzaga). That ought to provide enough motivation on its own.

“That’s why you play the game,” grad student guard Cormac Ryan said. “You want to play big games, big-time opponents. When we have a team as good as we do, you want to see what you’re made of and go battle against great teams.”

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No. 20 Michigan State (5-2) comes to Purcell Pavilion Wednesday (9:15 p.m. ET, ESPN2) for its third game against the Irish (5-1) since 2017. This one was circled on the schedule when it came out this summer. It looked like the toughest game on a middling non-conference slate before the season, and that has held up over the first three weeks.

It feels even more crucial now.

Why? The Irish’s season has already reached a potential turning point. The 5-1 record looks pretty on paper, but it’s flawed upon deeper examination. Those five wins all involved more game pressure than should be expected when a mid-major comes to Purcell. Notre Dame needed go-ahead baskets in the final minute to beat Radford and Lipscomb. It has dipped to 168th in KenPom’s adjusted defensive efficiency metric.

The one loss is the most recent game. A transfer portal-crafted St. Bonaventure team picked to finish outside the Atlantic 10’s top 10 beat the Irish 63-51 Friday in Belmont Park, N.Y. Even for a team with some discomfiting close calls, it was a break in character from Notre Dame. The Irish averaged 0.84 points per possession, shot 2 of 17 on three-pointers and had just 6 assists on 19 baskets (and against 9 turnovers). Those 6 assists were all from one player, guard Trey Wertz.

Through six games, the Irish have an assist rate of 42.4 percent. That’s No. 322 out of 363 Division I teams. They have not finished outside of the top 100 in that category since 2016. Stilted hasn’t often described Notre Dame’s offense in Brey’s tenure, but it sure is now. It would be one thing if this were a team full of underclassmen. To see it happening with a rotation that is 66 percent grad students? Not great.

“We’ve only had one game where we’ve had, like, 15 assists and 6 turnovers,” head coach Mike Brey said. “We’re struggling to find that rhythm.”

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Maybe Notre Dame’s age and experience is the reason it has lost only one game despite humming with the rhythm of a 50-year-old furnace a few too many times. All you need to do is look up and down the ACC standings to know it could be worse. Florida State is 1-7 with losses to three sub-180 KenPom teams. Louisville is 0-6. Syracuse has a pair of losses to mid-majors at home. Boston College has lost to teams ranked 155th or worse at KenPom.

“I’m thrilled we escaped [in the home games], because we could be looking at 3-3,” Brey said. “Not to set the bar low, but you look at teams and you can really be in a hole early. That was a punch to the face Friday, but you have a week where you can really recover from that.”

Notre Dame isn’t here to measure itself against the bottom of the league, though. Its fifth-year core didn’t come back to sneak into the tournament again. It returned to have a drama-free Selection Sunday and go even further in March than last year. Second weekend, at minimum. The Irish didn’t hide their ambition.

They have yet to resemble such a team so far. Even with a 5-1 record, they have dropped 37 spots in the KenPom rankings since the opener. This is the week that can change it. A win over Michigan State would ease some concerns and re-ignite outside belief in their trajectory. Three days later, Syracuse visits for the ACC opener.

“These are your power games now,” Brey said. “You have a great opportunity here this week.

“This is a big week for us to kind of join the upper echelon that has already said, ‘We look like we belong in the ACC. We want to join that club.’”

This core has resided in that group before. It finished second in the ACC a season ago and won two tournament games. It toppled Kentucky and North Carolina at home last year when it needed momentum. The win over the Wildcats followed the Irish’s most ignominious loss of the year, a road loss to a Boston College team that went 13-20.

A win Wednesday would have a similar impact as beating Kentucky did. The Irish flipped a switch then. Time to do it again now.

“Just staying in character, being ourselves, continue to play good basketball and do what we do,” Ryan said. “We’ve been in big games before.”

No. 20 Michigan State (5-2) at Notre Dame (5-1)

When: Wednesday, Nov. 30 at 9:15 p.m. ET

Where: Purcell Pavilion

TV: ESPN2

Line: Michigan State -2

KenPom prediction: Michigan State 68, Notre Dame 66

Last meeting: Michigan State won 80-70 on Nov. 28, 2020

Series history: Notre Dame leads 60-37

Leading scorers:

• Michigan State: guard Tyson Walker (15.6 ppg), forward Joey Hauser (13.9 ppg).

• Notre Dame: forward Nate Laszewski (18.2 ppg), guard Dane Goodwin (14.3 ppg).

Other notes

Brey said grad student guard Marcus Hammond is unlikely to play Wednesday as he recovers from the MCL sprain that has kept him off the court this season.

“I think it’s a game-time decision, but I think it’s a longshot,” Brey said. “Saturday [vs. Syracuse] is more realistic. He has made progress.”

• Michigan State senior forward Malik Hall will miss about three weeks after suffering a stress reaction in his left foot last week. Hall averaged 12.0 points and 5.3 rebounds in four games, shooting 56.3 percent overall and 36.4 percent on three-pointers.