No time to waste — or sleep — as Notre Dame goes cross-country to play Alabama in NCAA Tournament following 2OT thriller

Mike Brey wrapped his arm around sideline reporter Jon Rothstein, bellowed Saint Patrick’s Day well wishes to households across America and took off running.

First, to the locker room. Then to the press conference. Then to the team bus.

Save for a stop at a dais somewhere inside University of Dayton Arena to discuss a game that ought to rank among the wildest of his 880 as a head coach, he and Notre Dame never stopped moving in the wee hours of March 17.

And how could they? There was no time, for starters. Tipoff on the West Coast was 40 hours away when the final horn sounded on the Irish’s 89-87 double-overtime defeat of Rutgers in the NCAA Tournament First Four Wednesday. How can you sleep after something like that, a 2.5-hour memory-maker so exhilarating and thrilling?

“Some guys couldn’t fall asleep,” forward Paul Atkinson Jr. told reporters Thursday. “People were trying to come down from the adrenaline of a long game and all the energy.”

If Brey’s venture to the back of Notre Dame’s team plane was any indication, he might not have shut his eyes for a second while on board.

“Sleep is so overrated during the NCAA Tournament,” Brey said, clapping his hands. “Alright? Here we go.”

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The charter flight carrying Notre Dame took off from Dayton shortly after 2 a.m. ET Thursday and landed more than 2,200 miles southwest in San Diego some four-plus hours later. (Sadly, there was no Irish whiskey aboard). As quickly as Atkinson soared, gathered, stopped and floated in the final bucket to put away Rutgers, No. 11 seed Notre Dame was on to the next challenge: a Friday meeting with No. 6 Alabama in the first round (4:15 p.m. ET, TNT).

That’s life in the NCAA Tournament sometimes for the last few teams selected to the field.

The Irish are loving every minute of it.

“It’s a kickstart for us being able to have one game under our belt and just finding our way,” guard Prentiss Hubb said.

They have a day to prep for Alabama, one of the stranger No. 6 seeds in recent NCAA Tournament history. The Crimson Tide (19-13, 9-9 SEC) bring an astounding degree of high variance to an already unpredictable event.

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They have high-end wins, notably over No. 1 overall seed Gonzaga, Baylor (another No. 1 seed), Houston (a top-10 team in most computer rankings), Arkansas (a No. 4 seed) and Tennessee (a No. 3 seed). They have also lost to Georgia, which otherwise went winless in SEC play. Iona and Missouri (the SEC’s 13th-place team) also toppled them. They went one-and-done in the SEC Tournament, losing to Vanderbilt. They’re college basketball’s ultimate roulette wheel.

Predicting most anything Alabama will do is a fool’s errand, but there’s one common thread. The Crimson Tide will unload three-point attempts like unhinged grenadiers. They take 48 percent of their shots behind the arc, which ranks 12th nationally. Sometimes they’ll make five. Sometimes they’ll make 15. All told, they shoot just 30.8 percent from deep, which is 305th. Individually, nobody is shooting better than 35.6 percent.

Combine that streaky shooting with a defense ranked outside the top 90 at KenPom, and you have a high-ceiling yet entirely unreliable basketball team that could find itself in the Elite Eight as easily as it could lose its first-round game by 20. Coaches tend to look at the upside in game prep, though.

“The speed and the tempo, and then the shot-making ability from the three-point line,” Brey said. “One of the areas we really improved on was our three-point defensive percentage. We weren’t very good there the last few years. That’s a challenge, because they can make double digit threes easy.”

Notre Dame is running toward it.

Notre Dame (23-10, 15-5 ACC) vs. No. 6 Alabama (19-13, 9-9 SEC)

When: Friday, March 18, 2022 at 4:15 p.m. ET

Where: Viejas Arena, San Diego

TV: TNT

Radio: Notre Dame basketball radio network (local), Westwood One (national)

Line: Alabama -4

KenPom prediction: Alabama 78, Notre Dame 76

Series history: Notre Dame leads 3-2

Last meeting: Alabama won 74-73 on Nov. 29 2015 in Orlando, Fla.

Leading scorers:

• Notre Dame: guard Blake Wesley (14.4 ppg), guard Dane Goodwin (13.9 ppg)

• Alabama: guard Jaden Shackelford (16.7 ppg), guard Jahvon Quinerly (14.3 ppg)

Other notes:

• Alabama is led by third-year head coach Nate Oats, who is 61-35 overall. It went to the Sweet 16 last season, losing to UCLA. Oats brought the fast-paced, perimeter-heavy style with him from Buffalo, where he went to three NCAA Tournaments in four years. Last season, it fared better. Alabama shot 35.2 percent on threes and was KenPom’s No. 3-rated defense.

• Alabama’s offense is in KenPom’s top 15 despite the three-point inefficiency because of elite two-point accuracy. The Tide are eighth in two-point percentage, at 56.3, and take nearly 40 percent of their shots at the rim. They’re also 12th in offensive rebounding rate, which sets up a strength-on-strength matchup against Notre Dame (47th in defensive rebounding rate).

• Turnovers are a problem for Alabama, which gives the ball away on 19.8 percent of its possessions (270th).

• Wednesday, Rutgers sold out to limit Notre Dame’s three-pointers, allowing just 19 attempts. The Irish, in turn, hunted post mismatches and one-on-one chances for forward Paul Atkinson Jr., who put up a season-high 26 points on 13-of-15 shooting. They scored 58 points in the paint.

• Notre Dame point guard Prentiss Hubb did not commit a turnover in 44 minutes vs. Rutgers and had seven assists.

• Notre Dame’s defense aims to funnel opponents into mid-range shots and take away three-pointers. It doesn’t play a lot of help and is OK with conceding single coverage in the post. Alabama takes just 13 percent of its field goal attempts in the mid-range and shoots 33.3 percent on them, per Hoop-math. One way or another, it usually finds its way to the rim or generates threes.