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Notre Dame men's basketball stops slide with win over Pittsburgh

IMG_7504by:Jack Soble•about 14 hours•

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certa davis
Notre Dame men's basketball guard Cole Certa and forward Tae Davis. (Matt Cashore, Imagn Images)

Cole Certa was feeling confident. Why wouldn’t he be?

Three possessions earlier, he caught a pass from the right wing and shot an open three that hit nothing but bottom. The possession after that, he took the ball in the right corner, pump faked, took a dribble, stepped back and drained a second-straight three.

So with 10:27 left in Notre Dame’s Saturday matinee against Pittsburgh, with the Irish up by 1, Certa — a seldom-used freshman who entered the game with 2 made three-pointers in his career — decided now would be the time for a heat check. He pulled up from the logo, specifically the bottom-left corner of the blue-and-gold “ND” at mid-court.

Certa backpedaled and watched his shot fly. He screamed and pumped his fist as it rattled home.

“I gotta snap him back in and tell him who he’s guarding every once in a while, because he’s celebrating instead of sprinting back,” Irish head coach Micah Shrewsberry said. “But he believes the next shot’s going in, no matter if it goes in or not.”

Sparked by Certa’s 3 long-balls in just over 2 minutes, Notre Dame beat Pittsburgh 76-72 on Saturday. It was the best performance of a brutal month for the Irish, who improved to 12-15 (6-10 Atlantic Coast Conference).

At least for the moment, Notre Dame stopped a slide that seemed like it would never end. And at least for the time being, the Irish righted a ship that went off the rails with an unacceptable 97-73 loss to SMU on Wednesday night.

“They made a commitment to each other on Thursday,” Shrewsberry said. “They were disappointed. They just said, ‘We want to do whatever it takes, whatever possible, to stay together. To scratch, claw and get the job done.”

Following Certa’s spark, sophomore guard Markus Burton took over. He made a pull-up three to stretch Notre Dame’s lead to 5, and he followed that with three more buckets in a three-minute stretch as the Irish went on an 8-0 run and put Pitt in an 11-point hole.

Burton finished with 20 points, but the star for most of the night was junior forward Tae Davis. He scored 21, going an efficient 8-of-11 from the field.

Notre Dame has come to expect that from Burton and Davis, though. Certa’s contributions proved to be the difference.

“Every time I check in, the other four dudes on the court always just instill confidence in me,” Certa said. “Same thing with the coaches, telling me, ‘Shoot that whenever you’re open.’ They don’t know how much that means.”

The Panthers closed the gap late, but the Irish held off their comeback attempt. Senior guard J.R. Konieczny made all 6 of his free-throw attempts in the final 37 seconds, and Notre Dame needed every single one of them to keep Pittsburgh at arm’s length.

“Honestly, I wasn’t even really thinking about it,” Konieczny said. “I was just like, ‘Same shot every single time, and it’s gonna go in.'”

Notre Dame hits the road next week for a difficult matchup with Clemson. The Irish take on the Tigers at 7 p.m. ET on Wednesday, as they look to finish a disappointing season strong.

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