Notre Dame knows what’s coming – the NCAA tournament – after closing regular season in convincing fashion

Notre Dame knows what’s coming – the NCAA tournament – after closing regular season in convincing fashion

Nate Laszewski took the diplomatic route.

He and Notre Dame’s other seniors removed nearly all remaining room for doubt to creep into their NCAA tournament fate with a 78-54 pasting of Pittsburgh Saturday. Surely, they had to know that by now, right? And acknowledge it, even for a minute?

“It’s appreciating the moment right now,” Laszewski said.

A Senior Day romp indeed left much to soak in. Notre Dame won its 15^th conference game, the most in a single season in team history. The Irish earned the No. 2 seed in the ACC tournament. There’s a trophy out there to claim before Selection Sunday, and the immediate focus turns there. Still, there’s room for a mere acknowledgement. Barring several bid thieves and a first-round conference tournament loss to a double-digit seed, and even that might not be enough, Notre Dame is going the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2017.

PROMOTION: Sign up for just $1 for first year at Blue & Gold

Maybe that sentence wasn’t uttered publicly or privately in the locker room Saturday, but the Irish made clear they know what’s ahead without directly saying it.

Most of the seven seniors who briefly addressed the Purcell Pavilion crowd after the game offered some variant of “we’re not done yet.” In the locker room afterward, head coach Mike Brey spoke as if their seemingly inevitable inclusion in the field of 68 lacks novelty to them. Not that it’s unappreciated – ending an unacceptable five-year tournament drought should not be taken for granted – but the goals have shifted from simply making it to going somewhere once they do.

“They believe, they have ownership of themselves, they believe they can play ‘til April, and they’re right,” Brey said. “They can play for a long time. I told them that.”

There’s a message within that – well, besides dreaming big. They know they’re going and have for a little while. The team has already made plans to watch the selection show at his house, and unlike last year’s intentional gut-punch gathering there to watch a bracket be unveiled without them, they expect this visit to end with celebration.

“To be able to close that loop, I’ve been thinking about that for a couple weeks as we’ve been trending into this thing,” Brey said. “This is really going to be neat for them. It’s chasing it down as a group over one year.”

Several years, really. Laszewski, guard Prentiss Hubb, guard Dane Goodwin and injured guard Robby Carmody played three seasons on teams entirely off March Madness radars. Their freshman season ended with a last-place finish in the ACC. Guards Cormac Ryan and Trey Wertz did not go to the tournament at their old schools.

Time was running out to make it happen. This group understood it needed to get better and needed some help. Nobody was afraid to admit it because they all wanted the same outcome, whatever it took.

“Early on in our careers, we took a lot of punches,” Laszewski said. “It’s a testament to staying solid and staying together, especially early on this year when we had some rough patches. We didn’t falter.”

Notre Dame doesn’t talk about making March runs simply because it will be included. The Irish feel they can make one based on how they put themselves there. They didn’t arrive at this point by accident or solely because of a weak year in the ACC. A December win over now-No. 7 Kentucky is at the top of the résumé, after all.

The biggest change since last year’s 11-15 season is a defensive 180-degree turn. Notre Dame was KenPom’s No. 203-rated defense last season. This year, it’s 69^th and ranked second among ACC teams during conference play. It also jumped more than 200 spots in defensive rebounding rate. Offseason staff additions Anthony Solomon and Antoni Wyche have their fingerprints on the revival. But defense also requires pride and desire. That’s player-driven.

On the other side, a vintage Brey offense is back. Notre Dame led the ACC in conference-game three-point percentage (39.6) and hoists a whole lot of them (55^th in percentage of shots from three-point range). It went 14-of-24 in dispatching Pittsburgh, their fourth ACC game shooting at least 50 percent on threes. The Irish are 73^rd nationally in assist rate (55.4 percent), and in each of their last three wins, they assisted on at least 65 percent of their baskets.

Notre Dame football

• Hey Horka! How many games will Notre Dame win in 2022?

• Burlage: Here’s why Chansi Stuckey makes sense for Notre Dame

“One of our biggest strengths is when we play together, keep the ball moving, run up those assist numbers,” Ryan said.

Added Brey: “It’s just guys who have played a while together, who really know how to play and have really free minds of sharing the ball because it has worked for them.”

This is the product of years spent together, and it cut through any emotional instability Senior Day can bring. That’s a promising sign for how Notre Dame might handle the postseason, a pressure cooker like nothing else. Entire seasons and how they’re perceived hang in the balance of each NCAA tournament contest.

Coaches and players can toss out all the “just another game” cliches they please, but internally, it’s impossible not to acknowledge the stakes. Nerves are natural too. These are people, not robots. The teams with strong emotional control, though, often stick around for a while in March. Brey can sense plenty of it in his.

“There’s a real calm about this group, and it’s really cool to see because they deserve it,” Brey said. “They’ve been coachable. They’ve been battle tested. I’ve never been more excited about taking a team into the postseason, and I’ve had some good teams here. This group excites me as much as [Ben] Hansbrough’s group or Jerian [Grant] and Pat [Connaughton]’s group.”

To heck with diplomacy.