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Notre Dame Fighting Irish Basketball: 3 takeaways from loss to South Carolina

By Oliver Vandervoort

Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry during the Maryland Eastern Shore-Notre Dame NCAA Men’s basketball game on Wednesday, November 22, 2023, at Purcell Pavilion in South Bend, Indiana.
Notre Dame head coach Micah Shrewsberry during the Maryland Eastern Shore-Notre Dame NCAA Men’s basketball game on Wednesday, November 22, 2023, at Purcell Pavilion in South Bend, Indiana. /
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The Notre Dame Fighting Irish basketball team actually looked like they might be able to pull off an upset on Tuesday evening. Then reality set in.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish basketball team took on an undefeated South Carolina Gamecocks program that was heavily favored entering Tuesday night. For a time, it looked as though Micah Shrewsberry’s crew was going to pull off an upset.

Despite the fact that in the end, they couldn’t keep the momentum and eventually lost 65-53 to the SEC squad. There were still some positives to pull from the game. There are also plenty of negatives.

Here’s the three biggest takeaways from the latest loss.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish basketball needs more scorers

Markus Burton has shown that he can be a rather dynamic player when he’s on. When he’s not, it doesn’t appear that Notre Dame has a real backup plan in place.

Braeden Shrewsberry has shown that he can score on occasion, but like Burton he’s not someone who has found a way to be consistent. That’s one of the reasons the Irish have scored 70 or less points in a game, five out of six contests so far this year. If they want to have any success at all in the ACC, they’re going to need to find another dependable scorer or two.

Too streaky

One of the hallmarks of the Notre Dame basketball team’s season so far has been long streaks where the offense goes ice cold. Part of that goes to point number one. But other times the team just seems to have issues continuing to hold momentum.

On Tuesday, the Irish looked like they might pull off the upset, until they went ice cold, hitting just 1-of-11 shots and went from a tie game to down double digits.

Defense is a strength

While the Notre Dame Fighting Irish offense has been a net negative so far, their defense has been pretty good. On Tuesday, it shone on a level where if it had gotten any help, we’d be talking about Shrewsberry’s crew improving to 4-2 and posting a solid resume-building win.

Notre Dame held South Carolina to 38 percent shooting from the field and 28 percent from beyond the arc.

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish shot just 32 percent and 26 percent from three.