Observations: Rough start dooms Notre Dame in ACC Tournament loss to Virginia Tech

Notre Dame begins its Selection Sunday wait earlier than desired.

The Irish lost to Virginia Tech 87-80 Thursday night in the ACC Tournament quarterfinals, going one and done as the No. 2 seed. They never led and trailed the No. 7 seed Hokies (21-12, 11-9 ACC) by as many as 16 points. The loss snaps their seven-year streak of winning at least one game in the ACC Tournament.

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Senior guard Prentiss Hubb led Notre Dame (22-10, 15-5 ACC) with 23 points. Senior guard Cormac Ryan added 20. Notre Dame shot 52.9 percent from the field and 36.8 percent from three-point range.

Here are three observations from the game.

BOX SCORE

1. A weakness exploited

Even as Notre Dame’s defense became the ACC’s No. 2-ranked unit in conference play, per KenPom, it had a flaw.

Defending in the post.

Virginia Tech needled it all game. Forwards Keve Aluma and Justyn Mutts combined for 31 points on 12-of-22 shooting. Notre Dame put senior forward Nate Laszewski back in the starting lineup for the first time since Feb. 5, replacing senior guard Dane Goodwin, as a way of combatting it. Didn’t matter. Aluma and Mutts were too much.

That duo beat single coverage by scoring against it and defeated double teams with crisp passing. They bested man and zone looks. The Irish started Goodwin in the second half, and Virginia Tech immediately hunted post-up mismatches on him the first three trips down the court.

When Virginia Tech wanted to quell a Notre Dame scoring spurt, they looked to their two forwards. Aluma hit a turnaround mid-post jumper against Laszewski and drew a foul after Notre Dame pulled within seven points. He put a spin move on a defender after the Irish cut their deficit to six.

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Aluma and Mutts were the primary assailants, but Notre Dame’s defense sprung leaks elsewhere too. Moments of confusion and mental mistakes trumped intensity. They became detached from shooters or lost track of them too often. Early on, they were caught in ball-screen coverages that gave shooters room to step into jumpers.

Notre Dame clawed back in part because it held Virginia Tech to 3 of 9 from beyond the arc in the second half, but one of those makes was Storm Murphy’s haymaker with 2:40 to go when the Irish gave him too much space off a screen. All told, the Hokies were 7 of 19 (36.2 percent) on three-pointers.

Virginia Tech shot 57 percent Thursday and 59 percent in its Jan. 15 defeat of Notre Dame.

“They’ve been a tough matchup for us lately,” head coach Mike Brey said. “Those two big guys set an unbelievable tone.”

2. Offense breaks character

The first half started with an overzealous turnover on a lob attempt. It ended with an unmitigated disaster of a final possession that produced an intercepted pass instead of a shot.

Sandwiched in between those was a whole lot more of the same. And it put Notre Dame in too deep a hole to dig itself out of and come back. In moments where veteran teams often shine, Notre Dame’s senior-laden rotation put forth one of its worst offensive halves of the season.

The Irish committed 10 turnovers and made nine field goals, shooting 42.9 percent with just four assists. Possessions were stilted, with little movement and too much standing around. Passes sailed over the baseline, into the Virginia Tech bench and into Hokies’ defenders’ arms.

“We kicked it around,” Brey said. “We’re usually pretty good with the ball.”

Goodwin, the team’s second-leading scorer, did not take a shot in the first half. Graduate student forward Paul Atkinson Jr., the team’s third-leading scorer, had zero first-half points and finished with five. Virginia Tech’s switching seemed to bother Notre Dame, which attempted just eight three-pointers in the first half. That’s low for a team whose offense is predicated on generating a lot of them — and needs to when the potential for a shootout is high.

Notre Dame found itself in the second half, shooting 60 percent and assisting on 11 of its 18 field goals. They slipped and cut to the basket for easy looks at the rim. They went 5 of 11 on three-pointers. Hubb and Ryan carried the weight. Leading scorer Blake Wesley came out with 11:49 to go and did not return until 1:04 remained. He finished with nine points on 2-of-8 shooting and three turnovers.

“You’re going to have to outscore them a little bit,” Brey said. “You’re not going to just shut them down. We scored 80, but they were just too efficient.”

3. NCAA Tournament implications

Notre Dame should find itself in the field of 68 Sunday afternoon barring mass bubble chaos, which has not yet developed, but Thursday’s loss dropped the Irish to 4-9 in Quadrant 1 and 2 games. That mark — along with computer metrics that will mostly be in the 50s Friday morning — could trigger a placement in the First Four in Dayton, Ohio.

Before the game, the Irish were the second team to clear the First Four on BracketMatrix.com, a compilation of more than 120 projected fields. ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi updated his predictions after the game and had them as the last team to avoid Dayton.

There’s a small boost that could still come, though. Notre Dame’s 78-73 win over North Carolina Jan. 5 is currently a Quadrant 2 victory, but if the Tar Heels finish the weekend in the NET top 30, it will move up to Quadrant 1. They were 32nd entering play Thursday night.