Big East Tournament - Second Round
Seton Hall (19-11, 9-9)
vs. Notre Dame (20-10, 10-8)
When: Today, 7 p.m. EST Where: Madison Square Garden, New York City Line: Notre Dame by 1.5
Prediction: Notre Dame 78-72
The debate has raged for the last two weeks during Notre Dame’s remarkable four-game winning streak that lifted it from irrelevance to quite possibly one of the fortunate 65 NCAA Tournament teams.
Were consecutive wins over Pittsburgh and Georgetown enough to get into the tournament with some good work in New York City? Would the win over Connecticut that assured the Irish a 9-9 league record do the trick, or was the season finale win at Marquette still necessary?
Brey and the Irish would likely secure an NCAA Tournament bid with a win tonight.
If the season ended this afternoon, the Irish would be in the tournament, apparently as a No. 10 or No. 11 seed. But plenty of basketball remains so if Notre Dame wants to take all the guesswork out of its NCAA Tournament hopes, a win tonight over Seton Hall would do it.
“We’re healthy. Our frame of mind is good. You go to New York and it is kind of rebirth,” said Irish head coach Mike Brey, who preferred this week to talk about the conference tournament, not the national tournament.
“I’m not talking about any résumés,” Brey said. “Talk to me about New York City. For us to go up there and see if we can keep it going in New York, that’s all we talked about.”
The importance of tonight’s game becomes magnified because of the Irish opponent. Seton Hall – which beat Providence 109-106 Tuesday in first round tourney play – already dumped the Irish 90-87 on Jan. 11, so a second straight loss to the Pirates could compel the selection committee to take Seton Hall over Notre Dame because of similar profiles and head-on-head results.
With seven Big East teams – Syracuse, Villanova, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Marquette, Louisville and Georgetown – already locked into NCAA Tournament bids, Notre Dame and Seton Hall may very well be playing for the eighth and final spot for the league tonight. It’s possible both teams could get in, but more likely it will be one or the other, because no league has ever sent nine teams to the NCAA Tournament.
Win tonight, and the Irish can rest easy before Selection Sunday. Lose tonight, and there might be some restless nights and plenty of bubble watching. The winner will play Pittsburgh in the quarterfinal round at 7 p.m. Thursday.
“Right now we just want to keep on playing like we have been,” said Irish senior guard Ben Hansbrough. “[We’re] not thinking about the NCAA Tournament right now. The only thing we are thinking about is the Big East Tourney.”
This tournament has never been particularly kind to the Irish. Notre Dame has won its first round game only five times in 14 trips to the Big East Tournament, and none of those first-rounders may have been any bigger than tonight’s. The Irish have twice made it the semifinals, never to the championship game, and have an all-time record of 5-14 in this event.
That said, the four-game winning streak has this team on a better roll than many previous years when it went limping into the league tourney. The 2006-07 season is the only other time Notre Dame won its last four regular season games, heading into the Big East Tournament.
“It’s been fun to watch this team over the last four games, the winning streak they’ve gone on,” said Irish forward Luke Harangody, who will get some minutes off the bench tonight. “You just need to talk about the confidence level. Game after game it’s just gotten better and better, it’s been fun to watch what these guys have turned into.”
Brey’s team has averaged only 66.8 points a game during the four-game winning streak, or about 13 fewer points from the rest of the season. The difference has been in the defense. The last four Irish opponents averaged only 56 points a game and combined to shoot just 42 percent.
Seton Hall will try to play fast, but whichever team controls tempo tonight may have the edge, though the Irish might be better equipped to handle either style.
“It’s not like we don’t want to run. We’ll selectively run,” Brey said. “We are good in transition. We got to keep working on that because we got to try and get some easy ones.”
“It’s awfully hard to prepare for us now,” added junior forward Tyrone Nash. “Which tempo are we going to come out with? It’s only good for us because you don’t know how to prepare for us.”
SIMILAR PROFILES
NOTRE DAME
Record: (21-10, 10-8) RPI: 57 Good: Wins vs. three top-20 RPI teams – Georgetown, Pittsburgh, West Virginia. Bad: Home losses to Loyola-Marymount and St. John’s, road loss at Rutgers. Skinny: The four-game winning streak to finish the regular season may have been enough to overcome a weak non-conference schedule that ranked only No. 225 and could have severely damaged any NCAA Tournament hopes.
SETON HALL
Record: (19-11, 9-9) RPI: 55 Good: Home wins over Pittsburgh, Louisville, and Notre Dame, also no bad losses Bad: Only a 3-8 record against top 50 RPI teams, compared to 3-3 for the Irish Skinny: Seton Hall never picked up a truly big road win, but they don't have any bad losses, just a lot of them. If the Hall misses, they'll look back at 4 overtime defeats as missed opportunities.
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