The Good And Bad

Notre Dame’s 91-89 double overtime loss to Louisville on Wednesday night served as the perfect microcosm of everything that is wrong and right with the Irish basketball program.

Playing without All-American Luke Harangody, and left for dead before the game, the outmanned Irish did themselves proud by playing with heart, tenacity and all the passion reserved for a team at the top of the Big East, not near the bottom.

Five of Notre Dame's eight conference losses have come by eight points or less.

“I don’t know if I have ever been prouder of a group in my 10 years at Notre Dame,” Irish head coach Mike Brey said after the game.

The problem is pride and moral victories count for nothing, and ultimately, all the passion in Kentucky wasn’t enough to secure what could have been a season-saving victory…and so the questions and critics persist.

This season is starting to look remarkably similar to 2005-06 when Notre Dame lost four overtime games in conference play and dropped seven league games by three points or less on the way to a 6-10 season.

This year’s team (6-8) has eight conference losses, and five of them have come by three points or less. The last four losses have come by a total of seven points.

For whatever reason, the Irish never seem to win these white-knuckle games.

Is that on the players? On the coaches? Or maybe just the cruelness of league play in any given year?

Should a double overtime loss be looked at as a positive moment for the program and its future, or as just the latest indictment of Brey and a team that has lost five of its last seven league games and seems destined for the fifth trip the NIT in the last seven years?

Brey was asked about the momentum of his program this week and he expressed great pride in what he has accomplished in his 10 years at the wheel.

“The decade before I got here, in February how many times was the fan base thinking about braketology and their résumé being analyzed? Once?” Brey said. “I think nine out of ten years we’ve always been in the mix for the thing. I’m very happy with how we do business. Certainly we would love to win more Big East games and be in more NCAA Tournaments but I’ll take my track record.”

One of the biggest gripes against Brey has been a perception that he can’t recruit. Yet, he found one of the best players on Big East history in Harangody, and Tim Abromaitis is also starting to emerge as a star in this league, and he is just a sophomore eligibility-wise.

And with the quality minutes Brey got from freshmen forwards Jack Cooley and Mike Broghammer against Louisville, maybe the future looks brighter than what many of us thought it would. Of course, that brings up another gripe about Brey, where have these guys been all season?

“If you peek ahead, I’m excited about young players in our program,” Brey said. “I’m excited about some of the guards we have coming, [junior forward] Scott Martin coming back. But fighting into the top half of this league is the world we’re in now, and that’s our charge, to fight to stay in that top half, make your run from there.”

When you look big picture, Brey has done some great things for the program in his 10 seasons. Five NCAA Tournament appearances, a winning Big East record in all but two of his full seasons, six 20-win seasons, and a school-record 45-game home winning streak are among them.

But a feeling of diminishing returns, and diminished expectations, have crept into the program and have folks wondering if Brey’s best work at Notre Dame is behind him. Maybe we all got spoiled when Brey took his first three teams to the NCAA Tournament – culminated by a Sweet 16 run in 2003.

Wednesday night showed us that Brey’s Irish can play anywhere against anyone, and that’s what makes the final score so frustrating. Notre Dame is so close, but not anywhere near close enough.

If the tournament expanded to 96 teams, an initiative that appears to be gaining some momentum, Notre Dame would almost certainly qualify most every season, and perhaps then the critics wouldn’t be as vocal when discussing Brey and the future of his program. The Irish likely would have missed a 96-team tournament only once during the Brey era (2005-06). Would that have helped his legacy?

Games like Louisville make you realize just how close Notre Dame is to being closer to the top of the Big East standings. It also shows you why they are all alone in 11th place.

Games like Louisville make the debate over the state of Irish basketball much livelier.