Georgia Tech 86, Notre Dame 75: Sleepy first half proves costly

Strong second half surge not enough

Dale Zanine-Imagn Images

The Notre Dame fighting Irish were in Georgia today looking to boost their league record to 2-0. However, their first half performance smacked of a team that was more rusty than fresh, and they dug themselves a hole too deep for a second half run to save them.

Notre Dame found itself in an early 5-0 hole until a nice feed from Tae Davis to Matt Allocco on a back cut led to a free throw. Allocco would hit a corner three a couple possessions later, but that would account for all of Notre Dame’s early offense (and all of Allocco’s points in the half). Julian Roper continues to exert no gravity on opposing defenders on the perimeter, which made it way too easy for the Yellow Jackets to help on drives. The opening spurt concluded with an airballed contested hook shot by Kebba Njie. With the Georgia Tech defense locked in, Notre Dame trailed 9-4.

Sophomore forward Baye Ndongo made his presence known quickly. In the first four minutes, he racked up three rebounds, a block on a Davis spin move, and a put-back by grabbing a rebound over Braeden Shrewsberry’s head when the latter had him boxed out.

The scoring was halted until an and-one by Davis at the 13:37 mark gave the Irish some life. Notre Dame would get a post bucket from Nikita Konstantinovskyi and a three from J.R. Konieczny on the next two possessions, but Georgia Tech was able to match the Irish bucket-for-bucket. Their forwards, particularly Ndongo and Ibrahim Souare, kept making things difficult in the paint. They gave Tae Davis a rude adjustment to ACC bigs after dominating Dartmouth and Le Moyne.

More struggles against the Georgia Tech defensive pressure came on a spectacularly bad possession where Logan Imes and Burke Chebuhar exhausted nearly all of the shot clock while passing the ball back and forth to each other. Imes took a horrid fadeaway as the clock expired. Njie got the rebound, but Imes then got stripped, leading to free throws on the other end. Another end-of-shot-clock three by Imes bounced off the front of the rim, and Georgia Tech got another fast-break bucket. The Murphy’s Law stretch continued when Konstantinovskyi missed a bunny on a nice feed from Shrewsberry, and Shrewsberry turned it over after a Roper offensive rebound, leading to a breakaway dunk for Lance Terry. The Irish were getting killed in transition, and trailed 23-14 with 8:00 to play in the half.

Shooting woes continued for the Irish. They got four looks at three pointers (three of them wide open) in the ensuing stretch and missed them all. Konstantinovskyi collected another layup, injuring Georgia Tech’s Ryan Mutombo in the process, but his next bruising was a (fairly unintentional) flagrant foul against Ndongo. Georgia Tech was able to run the lead up to 30-16.

In the next stretch, the Irish got a couple threes from Konieczny and Sir Mohammed, making his return from knee surgery. However, turnovers by Mohammed and Njie kept the momentum Georgia Tech’s way. The misfortune continued on a play where a Georgia Tech player lost the handle on the ball, and it sailed right to Souare under the hoop for a layup. Allocco then failed to get rebounding position on a layup and committed a foul, then fouled Javien McCollum on a three point shot. Naithan George and Duncan Powell hit back-to-back threes for Georgia Tech to conclude a nightmare first half, with the Irish trailing 43-24.

The finger could be squarely pointed at the top three players for the Irish. Shrewsberry, Davis, and Allocco all played poorly in the half, with Shrewsberry putting up a goose egg on just four shots. Konstantinovskyi’s layups and Konieczny jacking threes led to each of them leading the Irish in scoring with six, which won’t get it done, especially with the Irish showing little toughness on defense or on the glass.

The second half opened with Shrewsberry launching an awful frustration three, but Ndongo committed his third foul on the rebound. Shrewsberry got on the board when Georgia Tech confusingly abandoned him after he caught the inbounds pass in the corner, and Braeden knocked down the shot. Davis drew Ndongo’s fourth foul on the next possession with an and-one, and suddenly the Irish had life. Allocco made a baby fadeaway from eight feet to complete the trio’s wake-up.

Davis wasn’t done. He drew a foul on Mutombo on the next possession for a couple free throws and banked one in off a baseline drive on the next trip down. Georgia Tech had committee five fouls in the half’s first 2:30, and called timeout to stem the tide. The Irish had trouble getting stops, so their offensive spurt only brought the deficit down to 50-36.

It appeared for some time that the tide had been stemmed, as the Yellow Jackets stretched the lead back up to 19 on an absurd Naithan George jumper over Koniezcny. However, the Irish recovered nine points in about one game minute when Davis got yet another and-one on an up-and-under move and Shrewsberry hit a couple of transition threes. Georgia Tech, sensing some sudden game pressure for the first time since early in the game, called timeout leading 55-47.

The Yellow Jackets pivoted to a small lineup with Ndongo still on the bench and no other bigs providing an answer to Davis. Davis continued to get to the rim at will, but the Irish had trouble getting stops. Particularly frustrating was their decision to continually allow Duncan Powell to catch the ball in the corner for threes without anyone helping off of him. Without any semblance of rim protection in the game for Georgia Tech, however, the Irish continued to succeed by attacking the rim. Even Allocco drove down the lane for a dunk!

Allocco and Powell kept getting switched onto each other in the next stretch and each generally succeeded when presented with the mismatch. An Allocco three in Powell’s face cut the deficit to 5, but a questionable blocking foul on Allocco and an even more questionable hand-check foul on Koniezcny allowed McCollum to get the deficit back to 7 at the free throw line.

At this juncture, the bigs, Njie and Ndongo re-entered the game. Georgia Tech briefly went zone, but the Irish picked it apart to get an Njie dunk, and that experiment ended immediately. Allocco was able to exploit Ndongo’s tentativeness with four fouls on a drive, but the Irish struggled to tighten things further because the refs just would not swallow their whistle on Notre Dame’s defensive end. An ill-timed turnover by Koniezcny led to a Lance Terry fast break bucket, and Terry hit a three on the next possession to get the lead back to seven, where it sat at the TV timeout with 3:43 to go.

Unfortunately, things fell apart immediately when play resumed. A Shrewsberry miss was answered by Ndongo getting the ball wide open under the hoop on the other end, leading to free throws. Allocco stepped on the baseline when the Irish got the ball back, and Powell responded with a thunderous dunk to stretch the lead back to 11. Micah Shrewsberry called timeout with 2:41 remaining, but the Irish weren’t able to make significant headway after that point.

Bullet Points

• Aside from the end-of-shot-clock desperation three he hit, Sir Mohammed (unsurprisingly) doesn’t look any more ready to be a contributor than before the injury. His limited minutes included a turnover and reluctance to make a post move on a defender.
• Njie was a trainwreck today. In addition to leading the team in turnovers, he collected only four rebounds on a day that the Irish struggled on the glass and generally offered little in the way of rim protection.
• Davis scored 22 points in the second half to finish with a game-high 27. Powell and McCollum, both off the bench, led the Yellow Jackets with 21 apiece.