Notre Dame Basketball down a starter against Niagara

Notre Dame Basketball is already facing an uphill climb in its season opener as the Fighting Irish will be without one of its new starting players.

Micah Shrewsberry and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish Basketball team are kicking off the new era of the program on Monday night. Unfortunately, they’re going to be doing it without one of the team’s key players.

A Notre Dame spokesperson announced that sophomore forward Kebba Njie is out for the game against Niagara. That’s a fairly big loss if only because the Irish are still working on trying to find the best combination of players in order to actually win some games.

The good news here is that Shrewsberry knows exactly what Njie offers as the forward played for him when the pair were both at Penn State last year. That will likely help the injury to be less impactful when it comes to Shrewsberry knowing what the player offers.

However, there’s still worry that so many new pieces, including the head coach would be easier to mesh if they were all available for Notre Dame Basketball’s season opener. None of the starting five for the Fighting Irish on Monday have ever played with each other.

None have ever played for Shrewsberry either, making Njie’s absence that much bigger.,

Notre Dame Basketball will have to find its footing

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish Basketball squad opens the season against a Niagara squad that won 16 games a year ago. That means that while the MAAC squad is considered a 10-point dog, they are not the kind of guy game you might hope to see for the Notre Dame Basketball’s season opener.

The Irish are also missing a player that did a little bit of everything off the bench last year. Kebba Njie shot 52 percent from the field while averaging 3.4 points, 3.5 rebounds, half an assist and half a block a game.

If there’s one thing the Notre Dame Basketball team won’t be asking him to do, it will be shooting it from deep. He hit just 20 percent of his three-point shots last year.