Holding Serve

• Box Score

Looking back, maybe it was a classic case of overreaction.

Barely a week ago, the Notre Dame basketball season was considered all but over after a disappointing loss to Rutgers that dropped the Irish below .500 in league play and into tenth place in the Big East standings.

Jackson was clutch down the stretch with 11 points over the final 10 minutes.

But in a conference where even mini winning streaks can change the course of an entire season, Notre Dame (17-7, 6-5) won its second straight Sunday with a solid 65-62 win over South Florida (15-8, 5-6), a team that came to Purcell Pavilion with a four-game winning streak.

Much work remains for the Irish to earn serious consideration for an NCAA Tournament spot, but two impressive wins in four days give the Irish plenty of hope and a solid start to the second half of the conference season. A week ago, Notre Dame was freefalling from any league relevance after four losses in five games. But these two straight wins have moved the Irish into a tie with Marquette for seventh place and only one game out of a fourth place tie with Georgetown and Pittsburgh.

“We’re in a nice position,” Irish head coach Mike Brey said. “And there’s a lot of basketball to play.”

Senior point guard Tory Jackson was the story in this key win. After scoring only one point against Cincinnati on Thursday, Jackson was key down the stretch against South Florida, scoring a season-high 18 points, 11 of those points coming in the last 10 minutes of the game when the Irish needed them the most.

“They guys on offense weren’t going and I felt like I had an advantage driving against those guys,” Jackson said. “Guys just weren’t knocking down shots today so I felt like I just had to step up.”

Notre Dame jumped out to a big lead in the first half but faced a dogfight throughout the second half, falling behind 50-44 before Jackson took scoring matters into his own hands.

“Tory just put his head down and rammed it right down their throats,” Brey said. “It wasn’t pretty offense but it was exactly what we needed. He was a man.”

Jackson’s jumper that led to a three-point play gave the Irish the lead for good at 62-58 with 1:01 left in the game. The Bulls got within one and had a foul shot to tie, but a miss at the stripe and two clutch free throws from senior forward Luke Harangody sealed the win.

Harangody paced the Irish with 19 points and 15 rebounds. Senior guard Ben Hansbrough rounded out double-digit scorers for Notre Dame with 13 points.

Similar to the easy 83-65 win over Cincinnati on Thursday, Notre Dame jumped out to a quick start. This time though, an early lead didn’t hold up.

The Irish made seven of their first nine shots of the game while holding South Florida to just 1-of-9 shooting through the first six minutes. The result was a 16-2 Notre Dame lead at the 14-minute mark. Probably a good thing Notre Dame had the quick start because South Florida hit 12 of its last 22 shots of the first half and closed the first half on a 24-9 run to tie the game at 34-34 at halftime.

The Irish were adequate offensively, but this game was actually won on the defensive end, starting with the lockdown work Hansbrough, Jackson and others did on Bulls junior Dominique Jones. The standout forward entered play as the leading scorer in Big East games at 27.0 points, and on a four-game roll where he had averaged 35 points a game. The Irish held Jones to just 10 points on just 3-of-17 shooting.

“I thought the defense and our poise were the keys today,” said junior forward Tim Abromaitis, who finished with eight points. “We concentrated on being better defensively in practice this week and it showed in the way we played.”