Syracuse struggles with Notre Dame’s pace in 2nd half of its close victory
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If there is anything to know about this Notre Dame team, it’s that it likes to play slow. Real slow. Heading into today’s matchup with the Orange, the Fighting Irish ranked 339th in Division-I in tempo. ND had a slow tempo in the final two years under Mike Brey, but new head coach Micah Shrewsberry has brought the tempo down to one of its lowest points possible.
Even though the Orange (18-10, 9-8 Atlantic Coast Conference) held on to an 88-85 win over the Fighting Irish (10-17, 5-11 ACC), they seemed to struggle with their opponent’s pace in the second half. That wasn’t the case in the first half, with Syracuse’s defense controlling the tempo, leading by 29 at one point. The Orange tallied 10 steals, forced 17 turnovers and scored 31 points off those turnovers, but still couldn’t close the game out until the final moments.
Syracuse head coach Adrian Autry said that his team started to play at Notre Dame’s pace at around the 11 or 12 minute mark of the second half. He added that he talked with Judah Mintz and Quadir Copeland during this time about the Fighting Irish’s pace.
“I wanted to get the pace going a little bit because we want to take good shots,” Autry said. “When you get a good lead like that, the only way to get back into it is to take quick shots.”
But Mintz said he thought the Irish really started to speed up the pace by finding the plays that worked. Autry also mentioned that the Orange were beaten on the same play two times in a row, saying that should never happen.
The repeated play Autry is referring to was a 3-pointer off a pick-and-roll from Braeden Shrewsberry. On the first play, the guard, who finished with 18 points on 6-of-9 shooting from beyond the arc, started down underneath the hoop before cutting up to the left wing. Kebba Njie set the off-ball screen, Tae Davis fired a one-handed pass and Shrewsberry finished the play off with a 3.
Not even a minute later, Shrewsberry was at it again.
He started down low, but this time cut up to the left wing and curled around the screening Njie. While he was more so in the corner than the wing, Shrewsberry had a step on J.J. Starling and buried his fourth 3-pointer of the afternoon as Notre Dame started to mount its ill-fated comeback.
“He’s a really good shooter,” Mintz said. “They had a couple of dudes that haven’t hit 3s in a while hit a couple of 3s. Things were just going their way.”
From a scoring and pace perspective, though, the first half undoubtedly went for Syracuse. The Orange dominated the pace of play, running up and down the floor at will while switching between the 2-3 zone and man defense.
This left the Irish to frequently pass around the 3-point arc, letting the shot clock run down to its final moments. With 14:19 remaining in the first half, Markus Burton worked from the top of the key as his teammates rotated into position. With Mintz in his face, Burton moved to the left and passed to Carey Booth, who pump faked a shot in the corner. But Booth passed back to Burton with five seconds left on the shot clock.
As the shot clock dwindled to under a second, Burton wanted to pass to Booth, but the forward couldn’t even get a shot off, leaving Shrewsberry with his hands in the air and a sulk on his face.
With just over six minutes left in the half, J.R. Konieczny threw up a contested fadeaway as the shot clock expired. But since there was such little time to shoot, the attempt was off from the start.
As Notre Dame outscored SU 56-39 in the second half, the extra passes ended up working in their favor. Burton had a chance to drive to the rim as he had done before, but he decided to kick the ball out to Davis, who hit a wide open 3-pointer to make it 65-54. On the Irish’s next possession, Burton hit another triple to cut the deficit to single digits.
The Orange could’ve kept the Irish’s pace at bay for the rest of the game, but there was a reason why once Autry came into the press conference paused and started out by saying the team had to figure how to keep that first half into the second one.
“In the first half, we didn’t give them any rhythm,” Autry said. “In the second half, they got going.”
