Notre Dame Basketball is Wasting a Down Year for the ACC

The ACC is bad, and Notre Dame basketball is not taking advantage of it.

At this point in the season, the ACC isn’t just experiencing a slow start. It’s not in a bad stretch. This is a down season. A very down season. This is a great season for a middle of the ACC pack program like Notre Dame basketball to take advantage — and possibly win the conference.

Notre Dame is wasting that opportunity. In fact, they’re a part of the ACC’s struggles.

There’s essentially three really good programs; Duke, Louisville, Florida State. There’s a handful of solid teams too, but it’s not a deep group of programs. Among that group of solid teams is last year’s national champion, Virginia. The Cavaliers offense has been anemic, scoring a high of 65 points in a game on three occasions.

Their struggles haven’t come close to North Carolina’s struggles. The Tar Heels are on their heels, as they’re 12th in the ACC. That’s what a 10-10 (3-6) record gets you. It got so bad that legendary coach Roy Williams said “Fire me,” after their loss to Clemson.

Even Duke, the always loaded power, doesn’t have that air of invincibility that shrouded them with Zion Williamson and RJ Barrett.

The Irish are 14th in the ACC, with a 12-8 (3-6) record coming off last night’s win over Wake Forest. With the conference as bad as it has been in recent memory, it would have been nice for Notre Dame to make it the top of the class.

The frustrating thing is that Notre Dame is just a step away from having a shot at the regular season conference championship. In conference, they have 5 losses of one possession or less. An inability to close has gotten the Irish off to an awful start in conference.

Let’s say they win 3 of those one possession games. They’d be 4th in the ACC. That’s assuming Florida State wasn’t one of those losses. In that case, they’d be ranked 3rd in the conference.

So, why hasn’t Notre Dame been able to win these close games?

It starts with a weak out of conference slate. They played two close games. One they won against Toledo (11-10), and one they lost to Indiana (15-5). They also lost big to Maryland. Other than those games, the out of conference schedule was a series of exhibitions. They didn’t prepare Notre Dame for their ACC games. Now, they struggle to close out the more important games.

It also doesn’t help that Rex Pflueger is averaging less than 5 points, and 4 assists a game. He’s talented enough to produce better numbers from the wing. Last season, Pflueger shot 39 percent from the field, and this season is down to 29 percent. It seems he never got back to his old level, after his injury, let alone improve from last season.

Without Pflueger to help John Mooney and TJ Gibbs, Notre Dame has struggled to stay consistent on the season. They’ve also struggled to find a closer, as evidenced by the final possession against Louisville. No one wanted to shoot, and they were forced to throw up a bad, last second prayer.

Notre Dame isn’t helped by a long bench, as Mike Brey isn’t confident to go to it often. Again, this means that they have fewer options to go to. If they’re getting beat by a mismatch, the Irish don’t have a chance to switch things up by going to the bench.

Why is the bench so short? It’s not a player development issue, but a recruiting issue. Brey has missed on a couple of key prospects in recent seasons, and it is starting to show in their personnel.

It’s a shame that these issues are keeping Notre Dame basketball out of the ACC race, and likely outside of the NCAA tournament for the third straight season.